c 


JANE  AUSTEN 


BY 

O.  W.  FIRKINS 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY    HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

1920 


COPTBIOHT,     1920 
BT 

HBNRT  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


An  attempt  is  made  in  the  appendix  to  furnish  a 
reference  to  every  important  quotation  and  allusion 
in  the  text.  The  courtesy  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
in  authorizing  the  reprint  of  the  verses,  To  Jane 
Atisten,  is  gratefully  acknowledged. 

0.  W.  F. 


48433m 


iu 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

THE  NOVELIST 

Chapter  Page 

I.  Sense  and  Sensibility 3 

II.  Pride  and  Prejudice 24 

III.  Northanger  Abbey 49 

IV.  Mansfield  Park 65 

V.  Emma 96 

VI.  Persuasion 116 

VII.  The  Group  of  Novels 130 


PART  II 

THE  REALIST 

VIII.  The  Realist 147 

PART  III 
THE  WOMAN 

IX.  Life  and  Ways  of  Life 177 

X.  Liabilities  and  Assets 206 

XI.  Conclusion 229 

Appendix 241 

Index 249 

V 


TO  JANE  AUSTEN 

0  THOU  who  to  romance's  sleights 
Didst  come  as  dawn  to  elves  and  sprites, 
Replacing  spectre-haunted  nights 

With  dayhght's  genial  reign; 
Shrewd  exorcist — who  couldst  so  well 
Romance's  goblin  bands  expel, 
Yet  keep  thine  own  unrivalled  spell, 

Incomparable  Jane! 

How  doth  thy  bodkin's  slender  steel 
Men's  frailties  and  faults  reveal! 
To  thee  Achilles  is  all  heel, 

Thou  lash  of  Folly's  train! 
Thou  scourgest  tomboy,  cynic,  grig. 
The  man  whose  diction  is  all  wig, 
The  snob,  the  autocrat,  the  prig, 

Inimitable  Jane! 

Thou  seekest  truth,  and  when  'tis  found 
Thou  dost  its  sportive  whims  confound; 
The  shafts,  the  stables,  and  the  pound 

Shall  now  its  pranks  restrain; 
It  dreads  thy  logic's  bristling  fence, 
Thy  files  of  serried  evidence, 
Thy  panopUed,  embattled  sense, 

Irrefragable  Jane! 

I  know  thy  passion's  cautious  throes. 
Its  timed  and  tactful  overflows, 
Its  firmly  regulated  glows, 
Its  exemplary  pain; 


viii  TO  JANE  AUSTEN 

Oh,  if  a  tense  could  court  a  mood, 
Or  axioms  propositions  wooed, 
Their  raptures  were  not  more  subdued, 
Inestimable  Jane! 

O  little  world  so  trim  and  flat. 

Where  Fate  must  straighten  his  cravat, 

And  Death  himself  must  use  the  mat, 

Ere  they  could  entrance  gain! 
Thine  earth  a  box  of  mignonette, 
A  bird-cage  in  a  window  set, 
A  shelved  and  shapely  cabinet, 

Inviolable  Jane! 

0  eye  of  eagle  and  of  mole, 

Thou  shrewd  and  penetrating  soul, 

Yet  off  thy  Uttle  English  knoll 

So  impotent  and  vain; 
Satiric— yet  beneath  thy  glee 
An  orgy  of  propriety, 
Thou  riotest  in  decency. 

Invulnerable  Jane  I 

Was  e'er  a  keen,  satiric  bent 
So  quaintly,  comically  blent 
With  smug  and  purring  self-content, 

And  homiletic  strain? 
A  Puck  in  cassock  or  a  nun 
In  motley — art  thou  both  or  one? 
0  frolic  lore,  0  surpliced  fun, 

Inexplicable  Jane! 

What  pen  could  draw  thee,  line  by  line, 
With  art  ironic  and  benign, 
And  truth  unflawcd ;  what  pen  but  thine 
0  woman  sage  and  sane? 


TO  JANE  AUSTEN  ix 

I  would  this  gladdened  world  might  see 
Another  Jane  to  laugh  at  thee, 
Rare  target  for  rare  archery, 
Irrevocable  Jane! 

Lightly  through  time  thy  figure  trips, 
Skirt  lifted  where  the  highway  dips. 
Thy  brow  now  crinkled,  now  thy  Ups, 

As  mirth  rules  or  disdain: 
The  barred  and  bolted  centuries 
Thou  frontest  with  unerring  keys, 
The  Park,  the  Abbey,  Emma — these 

Shall  swift  admission  gain: 
And  if  the  porter  claim  a  fee, 
Fling  Pride  op  Sensibility: 
The  flattered  door  shall  ope  for  thee, 

Imperishable  Jane! 


PART  I 
THE  NOVELIST 


JANE  AUSTEN 

CHAPTER   I 

SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY 

/Sense  and  Sensibility*  belongs  to  a  very  old  type  of 
story — the  story  of  brotherly  (or  sisterly)  contrast. 
In  Hebrew  narrative  it  is  as  ancient  as  Cain  and  Abel, 
and  receives  the  countenance  of  Jesus  himself  in  the 
parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  and  his  brother.     In 

*  The  dating  of  Miss  Austen's  novels  is  not  altogether  precise, 
but  it  seems  generally  agreed  that  Sense  and  Sensibility  represents 
an  earlier  formation,  if  not  an  earlier  date,  than  Pride  and 
Prejudice.  A  review  of  this  novel  is  therefore  the  natural  intro- 
duction to  a  survey  of  her  work.  At  the  outset,  however,  I  shall 
gratefully  avail  myself  of  the  succinct  and  useful  summary  in 
which  Mr.  R.  Brimley  Johnson  has  snooded  up,  if  I  may  risk 
the  word,  the  dishevelment  of  priorities  in  which  the  composition 
and  publication  of  Miss  Austen's  fictions  is  involved.  "Pride 
and  Prejudice,  written  between  October,  1796,  and  August,  1797, 
first  published  in  1813,  and  a  second  edition  the  same  year, 
third  edition,  1817;  Sense  and  Sensibility,  written  in  its  present 
form  between  November,  1797  and  1798,  though  a  portion  was 
extracted  from  an  earlier  manuscript,  in  the  form  of  letters,  en- 
titled Elinor  and  Marianne,  first  published  in  1811,  second 
edition,  1813;  Northanger  Abbey,  written  during  1798,  and  first 
published  in  1818;  Mansfield  Park,  written  between  1811  and 
1814,  and  first  published  in  1814;  second  edition  in  1816;  Emma, 
written  between  1811  and  1816,  and  first  pubhshed  in  1816; 
Persuasion,  written  between  1811  and  1816,  and  first  published 
in  1818." 

8 


4  J  ANY-  AUSTEN 

classical  and  modem  drama  it  lengthens  chainwise 
and  spreads  fanwise  in  a  long  descent  from  Men- 
ander  to  Terence,  from  Terence  to  MoUdre,  from 
Moli^re  to  Sheridan  (with  his  griding  Surfaces) 
down  to  a  success  not  two  years  old  in  the  commer- 
cialized drama  of  our  American  metropolis.  On  the 
sisterly  side  the  theme  reaches  at  least  as  far  back  as 
Martha  and  Mary  in  the  New  Testament,  and  comes 
down  to  yesterday  in  the  Marta  y  Maria  of  Vald^s 
and  the  Constance  and  Sophia  of  Arnold  Bennett 
in  the  Old-Wives'  Tale.  The  Austen  mark  is  pleas- 
antly conspicuous  in  the  fact  that  the  two  sisters 
contrasted  in  this  novel  are  both  virtuous  and  af- 
fectionate women;  they  differ  only  in  the  degree  in 
which  they  permit  judgment  to  control  feeling. 

The  conduct  of  the  novel  is  careful  and  successful, 
though  far  from  blameless.  Two  sisters,  Elinor  and 
Marianne  Dashwood,  expecting  offers  of  marriage 
from  two  young  men,  are  forsaken  by  their  lovers 
without  declaration  or  explanation  in  the  first  half  of 
the  book.  The  retirement  of  the  two  cavahers  in- 
duces a  languor  or  slackness  in  the  middle  of  the 
narrative  comparable  to  the  effect  of  the  departure 
of  the  masculine  element  on  a  social  assembly.  For 
this  shrinkage  of  interest  the  redress  offered  by  the 
conclusion  is  imperfect. 

But  the  stories  claim  a  more  complete  analysis. 
Elinor  Dashwood  learns  that  Edward  Ferrars,  who 
has  made  tacit  love  to  her,  is  bound  by  an  early  and 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  5 

secret  engagement  to  a  young  woman  of  inferior 
breeding  called  Lucy  Steele.  The  secret  is  divulged; 
the  young  man  is  promptly  disinherited  by  his  vin- 
dictive and  grasping  mother;  and  he  prepares  by 
marrying  the  girl  to  try  how  far  the  fulfilment  of 
duty  can  console  its  victim  for  a  blighted  love  and  a 
vanished  income.  Extrication  comes  from  a  novel 
quarter;  the  brother  who  has  stripped  him  of  his  in- 
heritance unexpectedly  relieves  him  of  his  bride. 
The  supplanter  is  decoyed  into  a  secret  marriage,  and 
the  release  of  Edward  Ferrars  is  followed  by  his  be- 
trothal to  Elinor  and  the  reluctant  forgiveness  of 
the  thwarted  mother.  The  average  novelist  would 
call  this  material  interesting,  and  the  author  of 
Vanity  Fair  would  have  lingered  and  luxuriated  in 
the  story  of  the  arts  by  which  the  young  girl  sub- 
stituted the  rich  brother  for  the  poor  one.  Not  so 
Miss  Austen.  She  dislikes,  or  merely  tolerates,  this  >/ 
material.  She  is  as  slow  in  getting  up  to  it  and  as 
quick  in  getting  away  from  it  as  the  decencies  of  the 
situation  will  permit.  Two-thirds  of  the  book  is 
over  before  the  divulging  of  the  engagement  which 
would  start  the  interest  for  the  average  reader  is  ac- 
compUshed,  and  the  decisive  events  are  narrated  at 
second-hand  in  the  briefest  summary  in  the  impatient 
conclusion  of  a  somewhat  leisurely  and  ambling  tale. 
The  haste  was  probably  due  in  part  to  Miss  Austen's 
discontent  with  the  makeshift  expedient  by  which  she 
cleared  the  path  of  Elinor  and  Edward  to  their  de- 


6  JANE  AUSTEN 

ferred  and  improbable  happiness.  She  was  also  not 
indisposed  to  evade  the  direct  treatment  of  crises, 
as  her  management  of  the  Lydia-Wickham  afifair  in 
Pride  and  Prejudice  clearly  shows. 

The  conduct  of  the  other  story  is  subject  to  equal, 
if  different,  strictures.  John  Willoughby  leaves 
Marianne  Dashwood  without  making  the  offer  to 
which  his  whole  behavior  has  served  as  prelude  and 
promise.  Marianne  follows  him  to  London.  Her 
disillusion  is  then  effected  by  a  series  of  incidents 
which  are  not  uninteresting,  but  are  at  once  so 
obvious  and  so  meagre  as  to  retard  the  speed  and 
contract  the  volume  of  the  narrative.  Another  suitor 
has  been  provided  for  Mariamie  in  the  person  of  an 
amiable  and  melancholy  Colonel,  twice  her  age  and 
the  object,  at  his  first  introduction,  of  her  untiring 
and  unsparing  raillery.  The  renovation  of  Colonel 
j  Brandon  in  the  esteem  of  Marianne  might  have 
seemed  a  seductive  theme  to  a  novelist  who  in  Pride 
and  Prejudice  was  to  lavish  time  and  pains  on  the 
rehabilitation  of  the  rejected  and  discredited  Darcy. 
But  in  Sense  and  Sensibility  Miss  Austen  has  stayed 
her  hand.  The  embellislmient  of  the  Colonel  is  in- 
cidental and  perfunctory;  it  consists  chiefly  in  his 
bestowal  of  a  rectory  upon  Edward  Ferrars — a  point 
of  only  indirect  concern  to  Marianne — and  his  fetch- 
ing of  Mrs.  Dashwood  to  her  daughter's  sick-bed. 
^  The  courtship  is  unhesitatingly  shirked ;  Miss  Austen, 
for  all  her  implacable  worldly  sense,  may  have  been 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  7 

woman  enough  to  shrink  from  detailing  a  process  by 
which  a  young  girl  was  induced  to  marry  a  middle- 
aged  gentleman  who  is  the  domicile — I  had  almost 
said  the  sepulchre — of  all  the  virtues. 

Sickness  is  a  classic  expedient  for  reviving  our 
interest  in  heroines  who  are  slipping  into  insignifi- 
cance, and  Miss  Austen  likes  sickness  for  its  own 
sake;  she  deUghts  in  its  respectability.  Accordingly^ 
Marianne,  who  seems  likely  to  fall  into  abeyance  in 
the  last  third  of  the  story,  is  saved  from  this  calamity 
by  taking  to  her  bed.  It  is  only  fair  to  this  illness 
to  note  that  it  disappears  with  the  most  obhging 
celerity  as  soon  as  it  has  accomphshed  the  rather 
trifling  errand  for  which  its  presence  was  invoked. 
That  Marianne  should  be  sick  in  a  house  not  her 
own  whence  the  whole  family,  with  the  exception  of  a 
grandmother  who  is  half  a  guest,  have  fled  at  the 
mere  pronunciation  of  the  name  ''typhus,"  appears 
forced  in  an  author  so  studious  of  the  normal  as  Miss 
Austen.  The  change  of  domicile  is  intended  chiefly 
to  provide  an  excuse  for  a  penitential  visit  on  the 
part  of  the  mercurial  and  dashing  Willoughby.  He 
makes  an  explanation  to  the  placable  Elinor  which 
he  has  the  impudence,  and  Miss  Austen  the  courage, 
to  present  as  a  defense  of  his  behavior. 

The  two  stories,  as  the  outline  shows,  are  essen- 
tially distinct;  they  are  bound  together  after  a  fashion, 
however,  by  the  intimacy  of  the  two  sisters  who 
scarcely  leave  each  other's  sides,  and  there  are  one 


8  JANE  AUSTEN 

or  two  secondary  ligatures.  Colonel  Brandon,  for 
instance,  who  is  Marianne's  suitor,  is  destined  for 
Elinor  by  the  prevalent  opinion  of  the  circle  in  which 
they  move.  As  we  have  seen,  it  is  Colonel  Brandon 
who  provides  the  rectory  for  Edward  Ferrars.  The 
interval  between  the  two  plots  is  lessened,  or  at 
least  blurred,  by  the  likeness  of  the  two  situations 
and  the  identical  moral  which  is  deduced  from  the 
contrasted  behavior  of  the  two  sisters.  I  may  re- 
mark here  that  the  difference  between  Elinor  and 
Marianne,  whether  in  conduct  or  fortune,  is  probably 
not  so  wide  as  Miss  Austen  in  the  zeal  of  tutorship 
intended  that  it  should  be.  Marianne's  palpable 
indiscretions,  the  private  excursions  and  the  letters 
to  Willoughby,  are  productive  of  no  palpable  mis- 
fortune. Her  real  error  consists  in  the  surrender  of 
her  heart  without  guarantees,  and  the  guarded 
and  provident  Elinor  has  made  the  same  mistake. 
A  few  months  of  anguish  is  the  sum  total  of  Mari- 
anne's penalty,  and  the  endurance  of  a  very  httle 
less  is  all  the  reward  that  Elinor  reaps  for  the  per- 
severing exercise  of  the  whole  troop  of  circum- 
spect and  heedful  virtues.  It  may  be  said  in  Miss 
Austen's  defense  that  the  support  her  narrative 
gives  to  the  virtues  is  no  more  uncertain  or  unequal 
than  the  support  they  commonly  receive  from  that 
lukewarm  and  hesitating  moralist  that  we  call  life. 
To  return  to  the  handling  of  the  story.  The  volume 
of  the  two  plots  is  small,  and  the  reader  who  recalls 


1/ 

SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  9 

the  plethora  of  minor  incident,  the  incessant  meet- 
ings and  partings,  the  fuss  and  bustle,  which  mark 
the  London  section  of  the  novel  will  be  puzzled  to 
relate  this  superflux  of  exertion  to  this  shortage  of 
accomphshment.  The  truth  is  that  Miss  Austen's 
main  end  is  the  exhibition  of  life  and  character  for 
their  own  sake,  and  her  specialty  is  not  the  great 
scene — hardly  even  the  deciding  or  impelling  scene — 
but  the  normal  social  occasion.  The  multiplying 
of  these  occasions  without  too  rigid  a  scrutiny  of 
their  actual  contribution  to  the  outcome  has  resulted 
in  a  feebler  story  and  a  better  novel.  It  is  notable 
that  side  by  side  with  this  slackness  in  the  pursuit 
of  relevance  there  is  an  extreme,  almost  an  ex- 
travagant, interest  in  the  development  of  minor 
trains  of  consequence.  Here  is  a  httle  catena.  First, 
John  Dash  wood  meets  his  sister  Elinor  in  a  jeweler's 
shop.  Second,  he  calls  on  her  the  next  day.  Third, 
he  asks  Elinor  to  take  him  to  the  Middletons. 
Fourth,  he  recommends  his  wife  to  call  on  the  Mid- 
dletons. Fifth,  his  wife  complies.  Sixth,  friendli- 
ness results.  Seventh,  the  Dashwoods  invite  Lady 
Middleton  to  their  home,  where  Mrs.  Ferrars  is 
staying.  Eighth,  the  Misses  Steele,  who  have  been 
invited  to  stay  with  Lady  Middleton,  hasten  then- 
acceptance.  Ninth,  they  are  included  in  the  Dash- 
wood  invitation.  Tenth,  Lucy  Steele  meets  Mrs. 
Ferrars.  Miss  Austen  revels  in  this  sort  of  general- 
ship; her  own  temper  has  points  of  contact  with 


L 


10  JANE  AUSTEN 

that  of  the  satirized  Mrs.  Jeimmgs.  On  the  other 
hand,  Colonel  Brandon's  supposed  courtship  of 
Elinor  has  almost  no  bearing  on  the  outcome  of 
the  story.  Willoughby's  seduction  of  Colonel  Bran- 
don's ward  is  material  only  in  the  clearer  revelation 
it  afifords  of  the  infamies  of  that  young  wastrel's 
character.  The  utility  of  the  Palmers  appears  to 
be  confined  to  the  provision  of  a  house  in  which 
Marianne  can  be  sick,  the  Colonel  assiduous,  and 
Willoughby  histrionic.  If  Miss  Austen  had  been  a 
man,  she  would  have  enjoyed  the  vocation  of  a 
courier.  To  see  people  from  place  to  place,  to  pro- 
vide for  their  entrances  and  exits,  and  to  get  as  much 
out  of  them  as  an  adroit  use  of  these  opportunities 
permits  would  have  given  point  and  vivacity  to  life. 
Miss  Austen  is  unable  or  unwilling  to  dispense 
with  the  friendly  offices  of  coincidence.  Coincidence 
had  not  in  her  day  fallen  into  that  sere  and  yellow 
leaf  to  which  the  frost  of  latter-day  criticism  has 
reduced  the  green  of  its  abundant  foliage.  In  this 
novel  Mr.  Robert  Ferrars  is  seen  by  chance  in  a 
jeweler's  shop.  Mr.  John  Dash  wood  is  seen,  equally 
by  chance,  in  the  same  place.  Edward  and  Lucy  call 
on  EUnor  by  chance  at  the  same  time.  The  en- 
counter of  the  man-servant  with  Lucy  Ferrars  at 
Exeter  is  one  of  those  alms  of  destiny  to  which  the 
poverty  of  novelists  is  perennially  grateful.  I  may 
add  that  the  servant's  mistake  as  to  the  identity  of 
the  bridegroom  is  one  of  those  borrowings  from 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  11 

farce  which  a  novelist  of  Miss  Austen's  calibre  in 
our  own  time  would  find  incompatible  with  self- 
respect.  Far  worse  is  the  misunderstanding  between 
Mrs.  Jennings  and  Elinor  in  Chapter  XL,  where 
Elinor  is  talking  abou^  the  gift  of  a  rectory  and  Mrs. 
Jennings  about  an  offer  of  marriage.  Here  the  stale 
devices  which  realists  contemptuously  allow  to 
farce  prolong  through  a  conference  of  appreciable 
length  a  misconception  to  which  the  bluntness  of 
actuaUty  would  have  put  an  end  in  sixty  seconds. 

I  pass  to  an  estimate  of  the.  characters.  Elinor 
Dashwood  is  the  personification  of  good  sense  and 
right  feeling,  and  the  instructress,  by  precept  and 
example  of  her  impetuous  and  incautious  mother  and 
sister.  The  hardships  of  such  a  position  are  manifest, 
and  nothing  less  than  Miss  Austen's  wit  and  vitahty 
could  have  extricated  Ehnor  from  the  straits  into 
which  she  is  thrown  by  Miss  Austen's  irrepressible 
didacticism.  "He  really  is  not  disgusting,"  said 
Gwendolen  Harleth  of  Grandcourt,  and  insisted  that 
the  praise  was  generous  for  a  man.  The  critic  is 
half  disposed  to  say  of  Elinor  Dashwood :  "She  really  <■ 
is  not  disagreeable,"  and  to  say  that  for  a  paragon  of 
discretion  the  praise  is  munificent.  Our  liking  passes 
through  crises  at  every  turn,  and  its  final  safety  is  a 
form  of  miracle.  The  reader  is  aided  by  the  fact 
that  under  Miss  Austen's  convoy  he  takes  up  his 
abode  in  the  mind  of  Elinor,  and  a  well-bred  person 
feels  a   difficulty  in  quarreling   with   his   hostess. 


12  JANE  AUSTEN 

Elinor,  moreover,  has  strong  affections  and  even 
keen  sensibilities,  though,  Uke  captive  princesses,  the 
most  they  can  do  is  to  flutter  a  signal  or  drop  a  rose 
through  the  gratings  of  the  tower  in  which  her  judg- 
ment has  confined  them.  Possibly  another  help  is 
her  practical  helplessness  in  many  cases.  Her  temper 
is  less  rigid  than  her  ideal,  or  what  we  may  venture  to 
call  her  own  version  of  her  temper.  She  seems,  at 
first  sight,  a  bureau,  an  official  headquarters,  to 
which  all  questions  are  automatically  referred  for 
instant  and  final  adjudication.  But,  however  rigid 
her  judgment,  her  conduct  abounds  in  compliances. 
Elinor  accompanies  Marianne  to  London  against 
her  judgment.  She  is  diplomatic  in  her  treatment  of 
her  brother,  of  Fanny  Dashwood,  of  the  gadfly  Lucy 
and  of  the  buzz-fly  Miss  Steele.  She  does  not  openly 
protest  against  Marianne's  letters  to  Willoughby. 
She  accepts  the  hospitality  of  the  Palmers  in  opposi- 
tion to  her  initial  prejudice.  She  hears  Willoughby 
after  her  indignant  refusal  to  hear  him,  and,  by  one 
of  the  subtlest  touches  in  the  book,  allows  herself  to 
be  swayed  in  his  favor  by  the  romantic  charm  of  his 
person  and  manners.  Miss  Austen  is  after  all  so 
much  wiser  than  her  superflux  of  wisdom  would 
suggest.  The  truth  is  that  the  novelist  is  as  in- 
tensely social  as  she  is  conscientious,  and  if  the 
essence  of  conscience  is  inflexibility,  the  essence  of 
society  is  compromise.  The  rational  woman  is 
provisionally  rational  and  ultimately  woman. 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  13 

Elinor  is  much  better  than  her  ungrateful  role; 
Marianne  is  not  quite  so  good  as  her  vocation.  She 
is  imagined  strongly,  but  thinly  and  brokenly  as  it 
were.  She  suffers  from  that  glaze  of  formality  which 
in  Miss  Austen's  work  overlays  the  really  formal  and 
the  really  informal  characters  alike.  The  twen- 
tieth century  hardly  knows  what  to  do  with  a  yoimg 
woman  to  whom  apostrophes  of  this  type  are  feasi- 
ble: 

And  you,  ye  well-known  trees — but  you  will  continue  the 
same. — No  leaf  will  decay  because  we  are  removed,  nor  any 
branch  become  motionless  although  we  can  observe  you  no 
longer. 

In  lines  like  these  the  satirized  Mrs.  Radcliffe  is 
vindicated — or  avenged.  Even  where  the  heart  is 
stirred,  the  creaking  of  the  eighteenth-century  stays 
in  which  its  throbbings  are  confined  is  distinctly 
audible. 

"  Nor  I,"  answered  Marianne  with  energy;  "  our  situations 
then  are  alike.  We  have  neither  of  us  anything  to  tell;  you, 
because  you  communicate,  and  I,  because  I  conceal  nothing." 

The  pitiless  Taine  remarked  of  Pope's  Eloisa 
to  Abelard  that  Abelard  would  have  cried  out 
''Bravo"  at  certain  passages,  and  on  reaching  the 
end  would  have  reversed  the  letter  to  see  if  "For 
press"  were  not  added  to  the  superscription.  If 
Marianne  wrote  as  she  talks,  one  could  almost  for- 
give a  similar  levity  in  Willoughby. 


14  JANE  AUSTEN 

Deep  passion  is  not  Miss  Austen's  strong  point, 
and  Marianne's  suffering  has  the  vague  though  real 
impressiveness  of  a  house  of  mourning  which  the 
spectator  views  from  the  remoteness  of  the  pave- 
ment. As  her  business  is  largely  to  suffer,  the  re- 
sulting exclusion  is  considerable.  The  need  of  keep- 
ing her  imprudences  within  strictly  respectable 
limits  has  shortened  the  span  of  the  character,  and, 
as  I  have  already  intimated,  her  speedy  recovery 
does  not  conduce  to  the  energy  of  the  thesis. 

The  first  effect  of  Willoughby,  as  he  comes  dashing 
into  the  story  with  spurs  jingling  and  bridle-bells 
tinkling,  like  a  youthful  chevalier,  is  distinct  and 
promising.  But  with  this  first  sharpness  of  impres- 
sion Miss  Austen's  proficiency  ceases.  Her  knowl- 
edge of  a  bad  man  was  decorously  limited.  George 
Eliot  in  Tito  or  Grandcourt  would  spell  you  out  a 
bad  man,  word  for  word  and  letter  for  letter;  Miss 
Austen  keeps  warily  aloof  from  the  Up  of  the  crater. 
She  knows  Willoughby's  manners  and  that  part  of 
his  temperament  to  which  manners  are  the  clew. 
She  is  not  withheld  by  any  visible  squeamishness. 
Her  account  of  Willoughby's  worst  offense  is  handled 
with  a  frankness  and  a  discretion  and  an  absence  of 
any  consciousness  of  either  frankness  or  discretion 
which,  in  relation  to  her  sex  and  epoch,  is  notable 
and  laudable.  The  awe,  the  mystery,  which  encircle 
sex  are  entirely  absent;  her  disapproval  is  emphatic, 
but  her  coolness  is  immovable.     Willoughby  is  a 


/ 

y 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  15 

trumpery  character.  The  curvettings  and  bridlings 
with  which  he  dashes  upon  the  stage  in  the  outset  of 
the  story  arouse  a  distrust  which  is  rather  confirmed 
than  lessened  by  the  final  caracole  of  his  repentance. 
Miss  Austen  leaves  us  at  last  with  the  impression  ' 
that  his  desertion  of  Marianne  and  his  betrayal  of 
Eliza  are  criminal  at  best,  and  that,  in  an  unpohshed 
or  imhandsome  man,  they  would  have  been  totally  ^ 
unforgivable. 

Edward  Ferrars  is  placed  in  direct  contrast  to 
Willoughby.  Willoughby  is  gloss  without  sub- 
stance; Edward  is  substance  without  gloss.  The 
difficulty  with  Edward  is  that  the  absence  of  plumage 
is  so  much  more  demonstrable  than  the  presence  of 
marrow.  Edward  has  the  ill  luck  to  be  compelled 
always  to  carry  a  shyness  which  needs  no  nursing 
into  situations  which  supply  it  with  the  most  liberal 
encouragement.  He  is  inactive  and  largely  invisible; 
and  when  he  is  dragged  upon  the  stage  by  the  in- 
exorable Miss  Austen,  his  chief  aim  is  to  conceal  his 
mind  from  the  friends  to  whom  he  has  been  obliged 
to  expose  his  person.  His  adhesion  to  the  pestiferous 
Lucy  seems  a  dismal  if  not  a  truckling  type  of  virtue, 
and  the  American  reader  is  not  propitiated  by  his 
naive  view  of  the  ministry  as  a  steppingstone  to  a  ^ 
living  in  the  double  sense  of  a  rectory  and  a  hvelihood. 
It  is  quite  true  that  in  this  view  of  the  church  as  a 
refectory  he  has  the  cordial  support  of  his  patroness, 
Miss  Austen. 

m 


16  JANE  AUSTEN 

Colonel  Brandon  is  the  last  of  the  three  men  in  the 
story  to  whom  the  office  of  lover  and  suitor  is  com- 
mitted. He  is  hampered  in  this  function  by  an 
accumulation  of  years  which  exposes  him  to  the 
contempt  of  romantic  young  women  of  eighteen. 
Colonel  Brandon  is  thirty-five,  and  the  touch  of 
rheumatism  from  which  he  suffers  is  confessed  by 
the  novelist  with  a  candor  which  may  be  classed  with 
the  heroisms — not  to  say  the  heroics — of  conscien- 
tious realistic  treatment.  That  touch  of  rheuma- 
tism is  felt  in  Colonel  Brandon's  gait  throughout 
the  story.  He  is  a  very  good,  indeed  a  verj'  efficient, 
man,  if  the  only  sound  test,  the  test  of  deeds,  be 
applied  to  his  character,  but  we  feel  always  that 
he  is  bandaged.  He  is  the  most  recurrent,  yet  the 
most  unobtrusive,  of  characters,  and  the  reader 
starts  at  the  perception  of  his  arrival  as  he  might  at 
the  discovery  of  the  nearness  of  some  quiet  person 
who  had  entered  the  room  on  tiptoe.  Even  at  the 
Ivery  end  of  the  tale  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
laid  aside  his  muffler;  wejknow  the  facts,  but  we  do 
not  know  the  man.  It  is  natural  that  he  should  be 
drawn  to  Marianne  rather  than  to  Elinor,  between 
whom  and  himself  is  the  obvious  bond  and  the 
impalpable  barrier  of  a  precise  conformity  of  tastes 
and  principles.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  understand  his 
final  conquest  of  Marianne  even  with  the  aid  of  a 
proviso  that  Marianne  accepts  him  in  the  first  in- 
stance on  the  unromantic  basis  of  gi-ateful  friendship 


y 

SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  17 

and  esteem.  Discretion  that  is  to  be  made  amiable 
to  indiscretion  might  sm-ely  assmne  a  livelier  and 
com-tlier  shape  than  it  wears  in  the  sedate — almost 
the  lugubrious — Colonel. 

Miss  Austen's  tolerance  of  inconsistency  is  evident 
in  the  changes  undergone  by  two  characters,  Mrs. 
Jennings  and  Mr.  Palmer,  in  the  shifting  exigencies 
of  a  varied  novel.  Mrs.  Jennings  as  we  first  see  her, 
is  a  vulgar  gossip,  wholly  foolish  and  wholly  con- 
temptible. In  the  course  of  the  story  she  becomes  a 
convenience  to  Miss  Austen,  and  Miss  Austen  is  too 
robustly  English  to  view  any  convenience  with  im- 
qualified  contempt.  Mrs.  Jennings  is  revamped. 
Her  cheap  good-nature  is  changed  to  an  endearing 
benevolence;  the  folly  which  had  pervaded  and  con- 
stituted her  character  is  reduced  to  a  tincture  that 
makes  her  virtues  pardonable  by  making  them 
diverting.  The  change  in  Mr.  Palmer,  while  much 
less  conspicuous,  is  even  more  violent.  When  we 
are  first  introduced  to  this  extraordinary  person,  the 
only  characteristic  he  exhibits  is  a  brutal  and  super- 
cilious rudeness,  and  that  characteristic  is  pushed 
to  an  extreme  from  which  anybody  but  a  demure  and 
discreet  clergyman's  daughter  engaged  in  the  writing 
of  reaUstic  novels  would  have  shrunk.  Later  on, 
when  Mr.  Palmer  has  a  chance  to  be  useful,  half  his 
brutaUty  is  obliterated  at  a  stroke.  These  alterations 
are  instructive.  In  Miss  Austen's  comic  delineations 
the  character  is  spitted  on  a  trait,  and  the  trait  is 


18  JANE  AUSTEN 

abnormally  sharpened  for  the  due  performance  of 
this  trenchant  office.  This  may  pass,  if  the  handling 
is  brief  and  includes  no  diversity  of  functions.  A 
person  may  stand  on  his  peculiarities,  as  he  may 
stand  on  the  tips  of  his  toes,  for  a  httle  while,  if  he  is 
content  to  do  practically  nothing  else.  But  there  is 
nothing  like  prolonged  contact  for  the  taming  of 
superlatives,  and  nothing  like  variety  of  function  for 
abatement  of  the  rankness  of  caricature.  Miss 
Austen's  changes  are  tacit  acknowledgments  that 
the  unrevised  Mrs.  Jennings  and  Mr.  Palmer  were 
libelous. 

This  confession  really  involves  the  whole  prolific 
and  interesting  group  of  characters  in  Miss  Austen  for 
which  the  formula  is  the  raising  of  a  single  trait  to 
the  highest  power  and  the  iteration  of  that  trait 
with  tireless  insistence.  People  are  not  like  that, 
whatever  Smollett  and  Dickens  and  Miss  Austen 
may  think.  The  arbitrary  modification  of  full- 
blown or  full-grown  characters  is  one  of  the  artistic 
sins  that  spot  the  record  of  Dickens.  I  will  take  an 
illustration  from  that  novel  of  Dickens  which  repe- 
rusal  has  lately  freshened  in  my  memory,  the  Tale 
of  Edwin  Drood.  The  lawyer,  Mr.  Grewgious,  in  that 
book  is  pure  fool  and  butt  in  the  extravagant  and 
irrational  scene  in  which  he  is  first  introduced  to  the 
amused  but  protesting  reader.  Later  on,  Mr.  Grew- 
gious's  help  is  wanted  by  Dickens  in  some  rather 
deUcate  transactions  in  the  conduct  of  which  a  char- 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  19 

acter  and  brain  are  indispensable.  The  equipment 
of  Mr.  Grewgious  with  these  desiderata  is  carried 
out  without  hesitation  or  delay.  Unsightly  tricks 
of  this  sort  excite  the  Uveliest  indignation  in  admirers 
of  the  authoress  of  &ense  and  Sensibility. 

Mrs.  Jennings  has  two  daughters,  Lady  Middle- 
ton  and  Mrs.  Palmer.  They  are  like  each  other  only 
in  their  brainlessness,  Lady  Middleton's  folly  taking 
the  form  of  an  inane  silence,  Mrs.  Palmer's  that  of 
inane  speech.  Mrs.  Palmer  is  the  smarter  perform- 
ance. Lady  Middleton  the  truer  success.  Mrs. 
Palmer's  drivel  is  incessant  and  her  good-nature  is 
swashing,  but  beside  her  husband — and  she  is  tactful 
enough  never  to  leave  his  side — her  very  insipidities 
are  lustrous.  Lady  Middleton  has  not  the  air  of  the 
woman  of  fashion  she  is  presumed  to  be,  at  least 
not  of  the  woman  of  high  fashion;  the  middle  tone  in 
her,  if  I  may  venture  the  pun,  is  very  noticeable. 
But  the  suggestion  of  well-bred  and  tranquil  in- 
eptitude by  a  very  few  strokes  is  expert;  and  as  her 
specialty  is  silence  she  is  not  subject  to  that  con- 
tinuity in  self-betrayal  which  is  the  retribution  of 
loquacity  in  Miss  Austen.  Her  husband.  Sir  John 
Middleton,  is  described  by  Goldwin  Smith  as  ''half- 
way between  Squire  Western  and  the  country 
gentleman  of  the  present  day."  This  is  gracious, 
ahnost  obsequious,  to  Squire  Western.  Possibly  as  a 
social  datum  it  might  be  approved  by  a  conamittee 
of  historians,  but  I  find  nothing  in  my  own  impres- 


20  JANE  AUSTEN 

sion  of  Sir  John  to  indorse  it.  I  cannot  think,  with 
Goldwin  Smith,  that  the  character  is  hinged  on  its 
vulgarity.  The  hinge  is  brainless  good-nature,  and 
in  the  deft  though  sparse  drawing  I  seem  to  feel  that 
this  good-nature  is  reciprocated  by  Miss  Austen, 
who  is  less  violent  than  usual  in  her  chastisement  of 
the  brainlessness. 

Fanny  Dash  wood  is  inhumanly  simplified,  and 
the  same  process  that  robs  her  of  nature  endows  her 
with  liveliness,  if  not  with  life.  Her  business  is  to 
clutch  at  property  and  to  maltreat  her  husband's  rel- 
atives, and  in  the  pursuit  of  this  vocation  she  is  not  al- 
lowed even  those  passing  furloughs  which  Thackeray 
permits  to  Blanche  Amory  or  Becky  Sharp.  John 
Dashwood,  her  husband,  is  a  curious  study.  In 
him  the  crudities  and  delicacies  of  Miss  Austen's 
handiwork  are  seen  in  operation  side  by  side.  He  is 
a  fool  who  talks;  that  is  tantamount  to  saying  that 
he  is  his  own  target,  and  his  marksmanship  is  so 
expert  that  he  is  left  at  the  end  of  the  exhibition  com- 
pletely riddled  by  his  own  bullets.  The  crudity 
lies  in  that  uniformity  of  method  which  never  per- 
mits him  to  open  his  mouth  without,  so  to  speak, 
swallowing  his  own  character.  The  delicacy  lies 
in  the  art  with  which  his  own  view  of  his  character 
is  suggested  at  the  same  time  that  the  utter  falsity 
of  that  view  is  laid  bare  to  the  least  wakeful  reader. 
The  ground,  the  texture,  of  his  character  is  selfish- 
ness and  worldly  greed,  but  there  is  a  lining  of  de- 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  21 

cency,  humanity,  and  self-respect,  and  the  lining 
is  very  thick  and  very  soft.  That  is  the  deUcate  and 
worthy  task — to  portray  inside  of  the  fool  and  knave 
the  man  who  is  like  ourselves  in  every  pomt  but 
the  excess  of  his  knavery  and  folly.  The  combina- 
tion of  abihties  and  ineptitudes  in  John  Dashwood  is 
mysterious.  Here  is  a  man  of  excellent  business 
judgment,  of  perfect  social  tranquillity,  of  faultless 
ease  in  the  handling  of  unexceptionable  Enghsh; 
yet  he  is  the  dupe  of  the  flimsiest  pretenses  and  blind 
even  to  those  inconsistencies  which  his  own  circle 
must  have  trained  itself  to  perceive.  He  complains 
of  poverty  in  the  same  breath  in  which  he  offers 
proofs  of  riches.  He  thinks  a  woman  who  invites 
two  girls  to  spend  a  few  weeks  at  her  house  in  London 
is  under  a  moral  obHgation  to  remember  them  in  her 
will.  I  have  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  England; 
in  America  folly  is  more  symmetrical. 

To  Mrs.  Dashwood,  the  mother,  who  is  an  un- 
regenerate,  or,  if  the  reader  pleases,  an  undegenerate, 
Marianne,  Miss  Austen  is,  for  tactical  reasons, 
rather  inattentive;  but  the  brand  of  truth  which  she 
exhibits  seems  to  me  more  delicate  than  that  which 
I  find  in  the  fuller  portraitures  of  the  younger 
women.  The  two  daughters  are  encumbered  by  the 
necessity  of  serving  at  the  same  time  as  the  poles  of  an 
antithesis  and  the  stays  of  a  thesis;  Mrs.  Dashwood 
has  the  leisure  and  freedom  to  be  herself. 

I  am  not  sure  but  the  best-drawn  character  in  the 


22  JANE  AUSTEN 

book  is  Lucy  Steele.  She  finds  the  spot  of  vindictive- 
ness  in  the  gentlest  reader,  for  her  business  through- 
out the  book  is  to  provide  distress  for  Edward  Fer- 
rars  and  Elinor  Dashwood,  to  the  first  of  whom  she 
serves  as  barnacle,  to  the  second  as  gadfly.  An  early 
and  heedless  engagement  has  bound  the  scrupulous 
and  submissive  Edward  to  this  incubus,  and  placed 
his  honor  between  him  and  his  later  and  lasting  love 
for  Elinor  Dashwood.  Lucy  Steele  is  single-minded, 
courageous,  and  resolute.  She  is  without  manners, 
without  affection,  and  without  conscience.  She  is 
capable  of  meanness,  hypocrisy,  and  treachery.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  impossible  to  detect  in  Lucy  the 
smallest  trace  of  harlotry,  of  Bohemianism,  or  of 
disorder.  She  is  privateer,  but  not  buccaneer.  Her 
means  and  her  ends  ahke  find  harborage  within  the 
securities  and  the  decorums — those  securities  and 
decorums  which  so  often  serve  as  shelter  to  worse 
deeds  than  the  deeds  to  which  they  serve  as  barrier. 
A  Frenchman  could  not  have  so  neatly  separated  the 
manoeuverer  from  the  adventuress. 

We  see  Lucy  only  in  her  relations  with  Elinor 
Dashwood — relations  in  which  her  confidences  are 
unmeasured,  her  attitude  dissembling,  and  her 
Jesuitry  extraordinary.  In  the  skill  with  which  she 
is  drawn  there  are  occasional  lacunae.  Lucy  is  sup- 
posed to  talk  bad  English,  but  the  stuff  or  tissue 
of  which  her  English  is  composed  is  not  bad  at  all. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  very  good  English  upon  which 


SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY  23 

patches  of  vile  English  have  been  purposely  and  in- 
expertly sewed.  A  second  mistake,  already  men- 
tioned, is  the  final  stroke  by  which  Lucy,  having 
jilted  Edward  to  marry  Robert,  allows  Elinor  to 
imagine  that  the  marriage  has  gone  forward  without 
change  of  bridegrooms.  This  seems  an  overdraft 
on  the  badness  of  a  character  which  has  met  all  its 
obligations  to  the  evil  principle  with  the  most  com- 
mendable punctuahty  and  exactness.  The  stroke, 
even  if  natural,  seems  artistically  wrong.  A  touch  of 
mahgnity  is  as  injurious  to  the  artistic  perfection  of 
the  pure  self-seeking  embodied  in  Lucy  Steele  as  a 
touch  of  benignity  would  have  been. 

Lucy  has  a  sister,  Anne  Steele,  a  scatterbrain, 
frankly  vulgar,  who  may  be  said  to  reek  with  good- 
nature. Her  conversation  is  an  unceasing  current 
in  which  she  not  merely  swims  but  splashes.  She  is 
drawn  with  a  precision  which  by  no  means  excludes 
gusto.  Robert  Ferrars,  on  whom  Lucy  is  finally 
bestowed,  has  every  claim  to  that  privilege  which  im- 
beciUty  and  vanity  can  confer.  He  is  hacked  out  with 
the  broad-axe,  but  the  vigor  of  the  axeman's  stroke 
is  immistakable. 


CHAPTER   II 

PRIDE   AND  PREJUDICE 

I  INCLINE  to  rank  Pride  and  Prejudice  among  the 
best-plotted  novels  in  English  Uterature.  This  is  far 
from  holding  it  to  be  impeccable.  It  is  mif ortunately 
true  that  a  novel  need  not  be  faultless— need  not 
be  free  from  grave  faults,  to  be  classed  with  the  best- 
woven  fabrics  of  the  clumsy  English  looms.  Enghsh 
noveUsts  commonly  write  on  the  grand  scale  which 
makes  the  correlation  of  particulars  difficult  and  u*k- 
some,  and  in  general  they  are  eager  or  preoccupied. 
Like  the  man  who  had  been  so  busy  in  making  money 
that  he  had  wanted  time  to  think  about  finance,  they 
have  been  so  lost  in  narrative  that  they  have  ahnost 
forgotten  plot;  and  their  forethought,  when  it  has 
existed,  has  been  moral  and  intellectual  rather  than 
artistic.  Even  the  jesthetic  re-quickening  in  the 
last  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  came  almost 
too  late  for  the  amelioration  of  their  plots.  They 
found  themselves  ready  to  appropriate  the  patterns 
of  their  continental  masters  at  the  very  time  when 
those  masters  were  preparing  to  teach  them  that  art 
is  truth  and  that  truth  is  patternless.  Accordingly, 
a  strong,  definite,  and  shapely  plot,  like  that  of  Pride 
and  Prejudice,  has  never  lacked  the  pedestal  of  isola- 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  25 

tion.  For  the  most  part  the  Enghsh  have  muddled 
through  in  novel-writing  as  in  war.  Lovers  of  liter- 
ature will  find  solace  in  the  thought  that  in  the  mili- 
tary field  the  habit  has  not  acted  as  preventive  to 
Blenheims  and  Trafalgars. 

The  plot  of  Pride  and  Prejudice  belongs  to  that 
admirable  class  in  which  two  processes,  a  flux  and 
reflux,  of  approximately  equal  length  and  strength, 
are  parted  in  the  middle  by  a  crest  or  equinox  in 
which  the  first  process  finds  an  end  and  the  second 
a  beginning.  This  is  the  type  which  proved  so 
captivating  to  the  imagination  of  Gustave  Freytag 
that  he  was  decoyed  into  the  error  of  making  it  an 
imperative  formula  for  tragic  drama.  In  Miss  Aus- 
ten's novel,  Elizabeth  Bennet  accumulates  dislike  of 
Darcy  throughout  a  volume;  throughout  a  second 
volume  she  accumulates  love;  the  arch  finds  its 
beautifully  poised  keystone  in  the  rejection  scene  in 
which  her  aversion  touches  its  acme.  The  manner  of 
these  changes  is  highly  characteristic.  The  word 
"  process"  which  I  have  applied  to  the  movements  is 
inexact,  they  are  no  more  processes  than  a  flight  of 
steps  or  a  series  of  ledges  is  an  incline.  The  gradu- 
ated is  achievable  by  Miss  Austen,  but  not  the  grad- 
ual. Elizabeth,  in  the  first  volume,  collects  evidence 
of  Darcj^'s  wickedness;  in  the  second  she  collects 
evidence  of  his  worth:  and  this  evidence  comes  not 
in  grains  but  in  blocks.  As  soon  as  the  rebuttal  is 
complete,  so  strict  a  logician  cannot  delay  the  be- 


26  JANE  AUSTEN 

stowal  of  the  hand  which  is  the  irrefutable  Q.  E.  D. 
Yet  it  is  by  no  means  unpleasing  or  unexciting  to 
watch  the  deUberate  movements  of  the  crane  by 
which  block  after  block  is  swimg  into  its  due  place  in 
the  massive  lines  of  Miss  Austen's  geometric  masonry. 
The  mingled  correspondence  and  opposition  m  the 
two  movements  is  worth  noting.  The  inexcusable 
rudeness  of  Darcy  to  EUzabeth  in  volume  first  leaves 
a  bruise  to  which  a  series  of  dehcate  courtesies  in 
volrnne  second  apphes  the  counteractive  and  appeas- 
ing salve.  A  scandalous  count  in  the  indictment 
against  him  in  the  first  half  of  the  book  is  his  in- 
justice and  malignity  toward  an  angehc  personage 
called  Wickham.  In  the  second  half  we  are  informed 
that  the  object  of  these  persecutions  is  a  worthless 
Lngrate  on  whom  generosities  have  been  vainly 
lavishe'H^  But  the  crowning  offense  in  Darcy  is  his 
interference  with  the  thriving  mutual  attachment  of 
his  friend  Bingley  and  EUzabeth's  sister  Jane.  This 
act  is  not  onl}''  revoked  in  the  second  volume,  but 
is  more  than  counterpoised  by  an  act  of  magnanimity 
toward  another  sister  by  which  a  prostrate  reputation 
is  placed  not  on  its  feet  indeed,  but  on  crutches,  and 
repairs  are  effected  in  the  highly  reparable  honor  of 
the  unexacting  Bennet  clan.  The  equation  is  not 
precise;  precision  would  outrun  nature.  Even  the 
general  plan  of  the  two  movements  is  a  departure 
from  the  truth,  and  owes  all  its  brilliant  virtuosity 
to  the  imposition  on  life  of  a  synometrical  elegance 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  27 

to  which  life  itself  is  uncompromisingly  hostile.  Of 
itself,  it  would  block  Miss  Austen's  claim  to  the  title 
of  an  inexorable  realist. 

The  differences  in  merit  between  Sense  and  Sensi- 
bility and  Pride  and  Prejudice  are  emphasized  in  one 
point  by  the  similarity  of  their  materials.  There  are 
two  sisters  with  two  parallel  love-affairs  in  both 
novels.  But  in  Sense  and  Sensibility  the  union  of  the 
stories  has  Uttle  other  basis  than  the  union  of  the 
heroines,  as  if  two  lapdogs  became  companions 
rather  than  partners  through  the  fact  that  their  mis- 
tresses were  inseparable.  In  Pride  and  Prejudice,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  two  stories  are  vktually  one; 
they  not  only  interlace;  they  interlock.  Darcy,  in 
destroying  the  happiness  of  Jane  by  the  removal  of 
Bingley  (who,  it  may  be  incidentally  remarked,  is 
almost  as  removable  as  a  joint-stool),  has  ruined  his 
own  prospects  with  the  justly  resentful  Elizabeth, 
and  his  sanction  of  the  renewal  of  Bingley's  addresses 
to  Jane  is  the  prelude  to  the  estabhshment  of  his  own 
happiness.  There  is  another  point  in  which  the  two 
stories  are  superficially  alike,  but  artistically  differ- 
ent. In  the  middle  of  Sense  and  Sensibility  the  two 
cavaliers  ride  away;  the  interest  slackens,  ahnost 
languishes;  and  there  is  a  "moated  grange  "  effect  in 
the  forsaken  cottage  to  which  the  name  "Marianne" 
seems  charmingly  apposite..  In  Pride  and  Prejudice, 
likewise,  the  two  heroes  betake  themselves  to  Lon- 
don, but  the  threat  of  languor  for  the  story  implicit 


28  JANE  AUSTEN 

in  this  step  is  dispelled  by  the  promptitude  with 
which  Darcy  is  recalled  to  the  proscenium.  It  may 
be  noted  as  a  symptom  of  the  times  that  the  modest 
and  discreet  Jane  pursues  the  fleeing  suitor  to  London 
almost  as  promptly  as  the  headlong  and  reckless 
Mariarme.  The  maxim  that  "To  the  victor  belong 
the  spoils"  appears  to  have  regulated  the  conduct  of 
the  most  exemplary  young  women  of  the  period. 

In  Pride  and  Prejudice  the  fabric  is  minute.  Ob- 
serve the  dense  packing  and  close  coherence  of  the 
Uttle  incidents  which  precede  and  provoke  Darcy's 
final  declaration  to  Elizabeth.  Bingley  becomes  en- 
gaged to  Jane.  This  brings  Darcy  and  EUzabeth 
into  contact.  To  gossiping  countrysides  one  marriage 
suggests  another.  The  report  passes  from  the  Lu- 
cases who  belong  to  that  countryside  to  their  rel- 
atives, the  Collmses,  and  from  the  CoUmses  to 
Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh.  Lady  Catherme  visits 
EUzabeth  to  bully  her  into  a  refusal.  Elizabeth 
betrays  a  willingness  to  accept.  Lady  Catheririe, 
visiting  Darcy,  unwittingly  allows  hmi  to  divme  this 
willingness.  Darcy  renews  his  proposal,  and  is  ac- 
cepted. 

This  is  more  than  care;  it  is  elaboration.  It  in- 
dicates not  merely  a  love  of  good  plots  but  a  love  of 
plotting.  Meredith's  plots  have  a  shnilar  careful 
minuteness,  but  the  enjoyment  they  might  afford 
to  the  reader  is  nullified  by  the  onus  of  unravelling 
their  complications.    Miss  Austen's  admirable  clear- 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  29 

headedness  makes  even  her  minuteness  lucid.  The 
Gardiners  are  entirely  subordinate,  but  they  are  en- 
Hsted  in  the  plot  three  times;  they  serve  as  hosts  to 
Jane,  as  escorts  to  Ehzabeth,  as  helpers  to  Lydia.  An 
ordinary  noveHst  would  have  treated  such  auxiUaries 
as  porters  or  hackmen  to  be  changed  at  eyery  station. 
When  Mr.  Collins  marries  !Miss  Lucas,  that  might 
serve  as  his  conge  from  the  novel  at  the  hands  of  the 
easygoing,  shiftless  storyteller.  Not  so  with  Miss 
Austen.  Further  service  is  to  be  extracted  from  Mr. 
Collins.  EHzabeth's  visit  to  liis  wife  becomes  the 
occasion  for  Darcy's  first  proposal,  and  his  value  as  a 
medium  for  the  transmission  of  Longboum  gossip 
to  Lady  Catherine  has  been  noted  in  a  former  para- 
graph. 

But  if  Miss  Austen's  care  in  the  provision  of  se- 
quences is  unresting,  I  cannot  affirm  that  her  choice 
of  hgatures  is  always  sound.  The  means  by  which 
Jane  and  even  Ehzabeth  are  made  to  spend  a  night 
or  more  under  Bingley's  roof  may  be  called  un- 
scrupulous, but  they  are  modesty  itseK  in  com- 
parison with  the  effrontery  of  the  methods  by  which 
Ehzabeth  of  all  persons  is  conveyed  into  the  grounds 
at  Pemberley,  yes,  even  into  the  unmitigated  pres- 
ence of  Mr.  Darcy  himseK.  Still,  even  where  Miss 
Austen  is  brazen,  she  is  careful  according  to  her 
Hghts.  To  rationalize  the  visit  to  Derbyshire,  Mrs. 
Gardiner  was  long  before  appointed  to  be  bom  and 
bred  in  that  county,  and  an  effect  of  innocence  is 


30  JANE  AUSTEN 

given  to  the  choice  of  that  district  as  a  destination 
by  making  it  a  reluctant  second  choice.  The  ball  at 
Netherfield  Park  illustrates  both  the  skill  and  the 
heedlessness  of  the  writer.  To  make  Darcy's  con- 
duct in  deporting  Bingley  excusable,  two  things  are 
requisite:  he  must  be  convinced  of  Jane's  indiffer- 
ence and  of  the  hopeless  vulgarity  of  the  vulgar 
members  of  the  Bennet  family.  The  second  of  these 
objects  is  obtained  with  admirable  foresight,  but  the 
first,  which  is  even  more  important,  is  ignored.  In- 
deed, two  points  in  Jane's  behavior  make  for  a  con- 
clusion precisely  opposite  to  that  which  it  is  needful 
to  implant  in  Darcy's  mind,  and  the  elasticity  of 
the  term  ''gentleman"  in  Miss  Austen's  day  is 
proved  by  his  pm"suit  of  his  imchivalrous  object 
without  forfeiture  of  that  title. 

In  a  review  of  the  characters  in  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice the  Bennet  family  merits  the  first  place.  A 
family,  as  Americans  understand  that  term,  they  are 
not;  they  are  a  congeries.  They  are  bedded  and 
boarded  in  the  same  enclosure,  but  a  family  Ufe  is 
unimaginable  in  their  case.  Even  under  the  double 
disadvantage  of  the  father's  neglect  and  the  mother's 
attention  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  Kitty  and 
Lydia  should  have  sprung  from  the  same  stem  of 
which  Jane  and  Elizabeth  were  the  primary  off- 
shoots. Sisters  may  be  as  far  apart  morally  as 
Goneril  and  Cordelia,  as  far  apart  intellectually  as 
Dorothea  and  Celia  Brooke;  but,  if  reared  in  one 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  31 

household,  they  can  hardly  differ  in  manners  as 
Rosalind  differs  from  Audrey  in  As  You  Like  It  or 
as  Romola  differs  from  Tessa  in  George  Eliot's 
Florentine  story.  Breeding,  being  more  superficial, 
is  more  teachable  and  less  variable  than  either  in- 
tellect or  character.  The  two  eldest  and  the  two 
youngest  sisters  in  the  Bennet  household  are  divided 
by  an  incongruity  of  this  type. 

Mr.  Bennet  is  well  drawn,  though  sometimes  he 
seems  little  more  than  a  salver  for  his  own  pleasan- 
tries. The  appearance  is  unjust.  He  has  a  character 
apart  from  his  witticisms,  but  he  and  his  witticisms 
are  practically  inseparable,  and  in  their  seductive 
and  distracting  company  his  character,  though 
visible,  is  hardly  seen.  No  one  ever  joked  better, 
but  his  lazy  tolerance  is  more  characteristic  than  his 
wit,  which  is  almost  too  consummate  to  be  individ- 
ual. One  imagines  his  wit,  when  not  springing,  to  be 
always  couchant  for  a  spring,  or  rather  perhaps  one 
imagines  his  condition  between  jokes  to  be  syncope. 
He  is  described  interestingly  enough  as  an  odd  mix- 
ture of  "quick  parts,  sarcastic  humour,  reserve,  and 
caprice,"  and  one  can  imagine  that  in  a  richer  soil 
and  sunnier  climate  he  might  have  matched  feUcities 
with  the  Bromfield  Corey  of  Mr.  Howells's  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham.  But  Mr.  Bennet's  lot  was  less  for- 
tunately cast,  amid  earthier  and  grosser  conditions, 
on  a  social  order  in  which  the  farm-horse  took  the 
girls  to  fashionable  parties.    He  is  overridden  with 


32  JANE  AUSTEN 

;  women — woman-rid  as  the  schoolmaster  whom 
Charles  Lamb  avoided  and  pitied  was  boy-rid.  A 
little  henpecked  by  his  wife,  he  finds  in  irony  both 
(solace  and  revenge;  in  his  encomiters  with  her  he  is 
perfectly  secure  of  an  absolutely  ineffectual  victory, 
.  since  his  shafts,  though  unerringly  aimed,  are  stopped 
'■  by  the  cuirass  of  her  insensibility.  I  think  we  should 
be  more  comfortable  with  Mr.  Bennet  if  he  had  less 
to  do  or  did  more;  he  reaps  the  guilt,  without  the 
grace,  of  nonchalance.  His  indignation  at  his 
daughter's  elopement  is  vehement  but  short-lived, 
and  the  baseness  of  his  new  son-in-law  supplies  his 
returning  levity  with  a  fresh  target.  Idleness,  the 
least  active  of  passions,  is  perhaps  finally  master  of 
the  swiftest  and  fieriest  of  its  competitors.  I  think 
there  are  possibiUties  of  delicacy,  of  pathos,  in  Mr. 
Bennet  which  his  creator  lacked  the  power  to  exploit; 
a  century  later,  a  more  intuitive  Miss  Austen  would 
have  drawn  a  more  intimate  Mr.  Bemiet. 

The  character  of  Mrs.  Bennet  illustrates  the 
firmness  and  sureness  of  Miss  Austen's  hand.  It 
illustrates  no  less  clearly  the  utter  want  of  temper- 
ance, of  shading,  almost  of  decency,  in  her  satirical 
delineations.  It  is  brilHant  and  it  is  garish.  Many 
women  have  had  foUies  akin  to  Mrs.  Bennet's,  but 
no  live  woman  ever  devoted  herself  to  the  quite 
superfluous  task  of  proving  that  she  was  a  fool  with 
the  perseverance  and  assiduity  of  Mrs.  Bennet. 
The  wariest  of  fools  are  off  their  guard  sometimes; 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  33 

they  stray  into  remarks  which  would  be  conceivable 
on  the  lips  of  intelligence.  There  is  a  neutral  ground 
between  wit  and  folly  in  which  perhaps  both  wit  and 
folly  spend  the  greater  part  of  their  time.  Miss 
Austen  scores  every  minute  with  Mrs.  Bennet,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  book  her  recompense  is  a  splendid 
score  rather  than  a  human  being.  With  her  usual 
ruthlessness  Miss  Austen  will  allow  Mrs.  Bennet 
nothing;  motherly  feeUng  is  conceded  only  in  the 
form  of  a  weakness.  The  woman  has  undoubtedly 
strength  of  a  kind — the  strength  of  an  undivided 
nature.  Counsel,  experience,  suffering,  leave  no 
dent  on  the  fixity  of  her  prepossessions.  She  is  a 
consunmiate  exhibit,  but  she  is  hardly  a  char- 
acter. 

Jane  is  probably  commemorative — the  Hquidation 
of  some  debt  of  affection  and  homage.  She  is  the 
angeUc  person  who  dehghts  the  middle-class  reader, 
and  she  is  naturally  rather  tedious  to  that  kind  of 
upper-class  reader  who  regulates  his  aversions  by  the 
raptures  of  the  middle  class.  In  Jane  there  is  a 
contrast  between  the  softness  of  the  material  and  the 
firmness  of  the  handling  which  is  interesting  to  the 
thoughtful  student  of  Miss  Austen.  In  calUng  the 
material  soft  I  do  not  contest  Jane's  possession  of 
judgment  and  a  kind  of  fortitude.  We  are  impressed 
with  the  strength  of  her  defenses,  even  while  we  are 
a  Httle  impatient  of  the  weakness  which  requires  the 
evocation  of  so  much  hardihood  for  its  subdual.    We 


34  JANE  AUSTEN 

like  Jane,  but  perhaps  we  are  tried  by  her  emotion 
when  we  ought  to  be  touched  by  it.  We  feel  pain 
for  her,  but  we  do  not  feel  that  pleasure  in  our  pain 
which  draws  and  wins  us  in  the  case  of  Ellen  Douglas 
or  of  Lily  Dale,  We  are  behind  a  closed  door,  and 
the  exclusion  magnifies  our  sense  of  the  suffering, 
while  it  denies  us  the  solace  of  participation. 

Ehzabeth's  Bennet's  value  as  a  character  is  large, 
though  not  transcendent,  and  her  interest  as  a  study 
is  extreme.  If  it  is  hard  to  find  room  for  Jane's 
judgment  in  the  rifts  of  her  sensibiUty,  it  is  hard  to 
find  room  for  EUzabeth's  sensibility  in  the  crevices 
of  her  judgment.  We  might  think  her  made  by 
formula;  her  very  speech  seems  diagramed.  These 
impressions  are  delusive.  Elizabeth  has  all  the 
human,  all  the  womanly,  traits,  but  she  holds  them 
by  the  oddest  of  tenures.  Her  figure  possesses  the 
indispensable  feminine  curves,  but  these  curves  are 
so  gradual  and  so  elongated  that  in  viewing  any  small 
arc  of  her  character  we  might  readily  mistake  them 
for  straight  hues.  Her  dehghtful  humor  should 
temper  the  precision  of  her  intellect,  but  the  humor 
itself  has  a  sharpness  of  definition  so  unusual  that 
it  all  but  reenforces  the  precision  it  should  quaUfy. 
Ehzabeth  has  a  woman's  variations,  but  her  shifts 
are  so  massive  and  so  dehberate  that  to  a  remote  or 
careless  glance  they  have  much  the  air  of  constancy. 
She  has  impulses,  as  a  woman  should  have,  but  the 
reader  must  know  her  pretty  well,  before  he  can  tell 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  35 

these  impulses  from  plans.  In  short,  there  is  a 
woman,  even  a  girl,  inside  EUzabeth,  but  you  must 
rununage  to  find  either.  Compare  her  with  Beatrice 
in  Shakespeare,  with  Diana  Vernon  in  Scott's, 
Roh  Roy,  with  Patience  Oriel  in  Trollope's  Doctor 
Thorne.  What  is  the  difference?  In  the  last  three 
cases  the  temperament  wields  the  intelligence,  and  is 
dignified  by  the  brilHancy  of  its  utensil.  In  EHza- 
beth  the  intelligence  wields — or  seems  to  wield — 
the  temperament.  In  the  firm  edges  and  broad  sur- 
faces of  her  character  there  is  both  satisfaction  and 
unrest.  There  is  not  a  fold  in  her  personaUty,  or  if 
research  fights  upon  a  fold  it  is  so  straight  and  so 
severe  that  it  leaves  an  effect  of  added  candor,  not  of 
coyness.  So  much  formafity  would  have  frozen  a  less 
spirited  woman;  so  much  spirit  would  have  ignited 
less  formafity.  Elizabeth's  position  is  curiously 
intermediate. 

In  Mary  Bennet  Miss  Austen  courted  disaster. 
Miss  Austen's  own  serious  conversation  is  exag- 
gerated ahnost  to  the  point  of  burlesque  in  respect 
of  the  conversation  of  real  people.  One  shudders  to 
think  what  will  happen  when  Miss  Austen  sets  forth 
her  own  notion  of  exaggeration  and  burlesque.  Mary 
justifies  the  shudder. 

If  Kitty  is  the  least  interesting,  she  is  likewise  the 
least  exceptionable,  of  the  portraits  in  the  Bennet 
family.  In  the  fifelike  limpness  and  tameness  of  this 
subsidiary  character  the  evocative  force  of  a  very 


36  JANE  AUSTEN 

few  touches,  when  the  few  touches  are  Miss  Austen's, 
is  happily  evinced. 

Lydia  Bennet  herself  is  hardly  more  reckless  than 
Miss  Austen  is  reckless  in  the  lengths  to  which  she 
permits  the  boisterousness  and  shamelessness  of 
Lydia  to  go.  The  drawing  is  unbridled.  Here  is  a 
girl  who  disgraces  herseh,  tries  and  sentences  herself 
in  every  speech — a  thing  hardly  compatible  with 
human  nature.  Her  want  of  conscience,  her  want 
of  decorum,  are  perhaps  barely  conceivable.  But 
can  it  be  imagined  that  a  girl  whose  pleasures  and 
ambitions  are  purely  social  should  be  absolutely  in- 
different to  the  preservation  of  her  claims  to  the 
respect  or  even  the  tolerance  of  society?  She  is  a 
•gentleman's  daughter;  she  has  two  sisters  who  are 
models  of  refinement;  and  she  has  not  one  ladylike 
instinct,  not  one  vestige  of  decorum.  Scott  is 
thought  to  be  impromptu  and  swashing  in  com- 
parison with  Miss  Austen,  but  compare  the  shading 
in  the  character  of  the  compromised  and  fugitive 
EjEhe  Deans  with  Miss  Austen's  big  bow-wow  por- 
trayal of  Lydia  Bennet. 

Nevertheless  gross  as  the  characterization  is,  it  is 
vigorous  in  its  crude  way.  If  the  strokes  are  few, 
their  vividness  is  unequalled;  and,  if  they  have  no 
support  in  human  nature,  they  reenforce  each  other. 
Even  individuality  is  secured,  though  how  individu- 
ality can  be  imparted  to  a  character  that  has  neither 
variety  nor  moderation  is  a  paradox  before  its  ac- 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  37 

complishment  and  a  secret  afterward.  Lydia's  in- 
dividuality rests  mainly  on  a  self-reliance  which 
gives  a  massiveness  to  her  very  levity  and  is  intrin- 
sically a  respectable  trait.  I  think  that  Miss  Austen 
felt  this,  though  I  doubt  if  she  was  awake  to  her  own 
feehng. 

Darcy,  the  problem  of  the  book,  is  also  its  failure. 
He  is  neither  firmly  drawn  nor  clearly  understood. 
A  really  estimable  character  is  to  appear  intolerable 
throughout  the  first  half  of  a  book,  and  to  reveal 
a  climax  of  virtue  in  the  last  half.  The  condition 
of  success  in  this  adventure  is  that  no  offense  shall 
be  specified  in  the  premises  which  cannot  be  forgiven 
as  venial  or  explained  as  illusory  in  the  conclusion. 
Miss  Austen  is  too  fond  of  violent  coloring  to  observe 
this  rule.  Darcy  is  merely  the  shell  of  a  character, 
and  the  two  Hps  of  the  shell  will  not  meet. 

When  he  first  appears,  he  speaks  insultingly  of  a 
young  girl  within  her  hearing.  After  that,  all  is 
over,  and  to  search  the  character  for  virtues  is  to 
delve  among  ruins  for  salvage.  Goldwin  Smith's 
comments  on  this  behavior  leave  nothing  whatever 
to  be  said  either  in  supplement  or  in  retort.  "No- 
body but  a  puppy  would  reply  when  he  was  asked  to 
let  himself  be  introduced  to  a  young  lady,  'She  is 
tolerable,  but  not  handsome  enough  to  tempt  me; 
and  I  am  in  no  humour  at  present  to  give  conse- 
quence to  young  ladies  who  are  sUghted  by  other 
jnen.'"     Strange  things  no  doubt  passed  as  ladies 


38  JANE  AUSTEN 

and  gentlemen  in  Miss  Austen's  day,  but  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  that  puppyhood  and  magnanimity  shared 
a  character  between  them  in  any  age.  Darcy  has  not 
exhausted  his  littleness  in  this  remark.  The  thrift 
of  Miss  Austen  has  provided  him  with  a  reserve  of 
enormities.  He  insults  Elizabeth  in  the  act  of  sohcit- 
ing  her  hand.  Later  on,  he  writes  her  a  letter  in 
which  he  vilifies  her  family,  and  excuses  this  in- 
decency on  the  characteristic  ground  that  "my 
character  required  that  it  be  written  and  read." 
In  a  word,  the  recovery  of  her  esteem  is  to  be  pur- 
chased by  her  mortification  in  the  perusal  of  insults 
to  her  nearest  relatives.  This  is  the  conduct  of  a 
man  whose  character,  in  the  sequel,  is  to  be  pictured 
as  the  abode  and  meeting-place  not  only  of  all  the 
virtues  but  of  all  the  deficacies.  One  does  not  envy 
the  virtues  and  the  deUcacies  their  lodgings. 

Miss  Austen's  explanation  of  all  this  is  that  he  was 
spoiled  in  his  youth,  that  his  pride  was  not  innate  or 
ingrained,  but  a  cloak  or  even  a  shawl,  which  dropped 
off  at  once  and  forever  the  moment  a  young  woman 
with  a  mind  of  her  own  gave  it  a  vigorous  twitch  by 
rejecting  its  wearer.  Darcy,  however,  is  long  past 
the  juveniUties  of  fife,  and  his  strong  character — we 
are  assured  that  it  is  strong — is  fully  ripened.  His 
pride  is  not  a  gentleman's  pride,  but  a  sullen  and 
forbidding  arrogance,  a  pride  that  flaunts  its  own 
withdrawals  and  isolations,  that  battens  on  the  morti- 
fications it  inflicts.    He  is  like  Dombey,  except  that 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  39 

he  is  not  absolute  fool,  and  the  change  he  exhibits  is 
only  a  httle  less  incredible  than  the  change  by  which 
Dombey,  in  the  language  of  the  uncompromising 
Taine,  "  spoiled  a  fine  novel."  His  churHshness  in 
society  would  have  a  certain  excuse,  if,  like  the  im- 
perious Rochester  in  Jane  Eyre,  he  had  a  tempera- 
ment to  which  society  was  an  episode  or  a  bagatelle. 
But  Darcy  is  as  much  a  social  animal  as  Bingley  or 
Wickham;  he  is  that  unpleasing  and  unlucky  combi- 
nation in  which  the  social  ideal  consorts  with  the  un- 
social temper. 

An  owl  I  fancied  scared  by  night, 
A  fish  that  had  the  water-fright — 

though  in  Darcy  it  is  disUke  rather  than  scare  that  is 
visible. 

There  is  a  stiffness  in  almost  all  the  man's  move- 
ments; it  abates  a  little  in  the  spring  warmth  of  his 
first  hesitating  attraction  toward  Elizabeth,  but  soon 
reasserts  itself,  especially  in  the  love-making,  which 
has  an  effect  of  being  done  by  clockwork.  Even 
his  anger  is  heavy;  it  makes  him  vehement,  but  it 
cannot  make  him  supple.  There  is  one  happy 
stroke  in  which  Miss  Austen,  who  is  wiser  than  she 
sometimes  chooses  to  let  her  patrons  suspect,  indi- 
cates the  survival  of  the  old  man  in  the  spick-and- 
span  paragon  whom  she  has  obUgingly  revamped  for 
the  delectation  of  the  uncritical  reader.  When 
he  revokes  the  inhibition  he  has  laid  upon  Bingley, 


40  JANE  AUSTEN 

Elizabeth  cannot  "help  smiling  at  his  easy  manner 
of  directing  his  friend.  .  .  .  EUzabeth  longed  to 
observe  that  Mr.  Bingley  had  been  a  most  delightful 
friend — so  easily  guided  that  his  worth  was  invalu- 
able; but  she  checked  herself."  Does  Miss  Austen 
often  check  herself,  with  the  satiric  truth  balancing 
on  her  hps? 

As  portraits  I  prefer  either  Bingley  or  Wickham 
to  Darcy.  The  deUneation  is  sparing,  ahnost  frugal, 
in  both  cases;  the  margin  round  the  text  is  blank  and 
broad.  Bingley,  sHght  as  he  is,  possesses  an  in- 
dividuahty,  the  key  to  which  may  possibly  be  found 
in  his  union  of  impulsiveness  with  docility.  He  is  one 
of  those  persons  in  whom  an  effect  of  general  ade- 
quacy to  the  immediate  occasion  is  combined  with 
final  insignificance.  He  is  not  a  mere  nobody;  he  is 
not  a  mere  anybody:  yet  we  feel  that  his  proximity 
to  both  those  characters  might  have  made  a  more 
perceptive  wife  than  Jane  uncomfortable.  That  his 
winningness  should  somehow  percolate  through  the 
scant  portrayal  to  the  indifferent  mind  of  the  half- 
attentive  reader  is  proof  of  the  dehcacy  of  Miss 
Austen's  touch. 

Side  by  side  with  the  attachable  and  detachable 
Bingley,  we  have  in  Wickham  another  happy  illus- 
tration of  the  multum  in  parvo  form  of  character- 
drawing.  We  know  of  Wickham's  person  only  what 
we  can  extract  from  the  brief  generalities  of  a  single 
uncommunicative  sentence.     "His  appearance  was 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  41 

greatly  in  his  favour;  he  had  all  the  best  part  of 
beauty,  a  fine  countenance,  a  good  figure,  and  very 
pleasing  address."  We  do  not  hear  his  voice,  or 
discriminate  his  tones,  and  his  speeches,  which  are 
conscientiously  reported,  are  suggestive  of  an  ab- 
stract and  colorless  propriety.  Yet  somehow  Wick- 
ham  is  got  before  us.  His  entrance  is  clandestine, 
but  his  presence  is  unmistakable.  The  word  that 
embodies  him,  to  my  imagination  at  least,  is  velvety. 
He  is  the  demure,  pensive,  and  pathetic  rascal; 
he  had  wished  to  be  a  clergyman,  and  he  is  not  un- 
Hke  the  sort  of  man  whom  one  can  imagine  the  Rev- 
erend Laurence  Sterne  to  have  been — at  any  rate 
that  traditional  Sterne  whom  Thackeray  amused 
himseK  by  impahng  in  the  English  Humourists.  His 
aplomb  is  exemplary;  it  is  very  nearly  as  good  as 
innocence.  Miss  Austen,  who  is  the  kind  of  person 
to  accept  a  hon  mot  as  expiation  for  a  felony  if  the 
transaction  could  be  kept  inviolably  secret,  is  rather 
more  tolerant  of  Wickham  than  so  responsible  a 
woman  has  any  right  to  be. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  prodigious  and  portentous 
Mr.  Collins  is  fully  entitled  to  the  superlative  praise 
he  has  ehcited  in  certain  quarters.  He  is  rather  too 
unqualified  himself  to  be  admired  without  qualifica- 
tion. Miss  Austen's  stroke  is  bold  and  blunt,  and 
she  begrudges  the  character  every  dehcacy — I  mean 
of  course  artistic,  not  moral,  dehcacy — which  could 
impair  its  rolHcking  completeness.    There  is  a  con- 


42  JANE  AUSTEN 

ceptual  felicity  in  the  iinion  of  egregious  self-im- 
portance with  gross  toadyism.  The  sycophant  to 
rank  who  is  boaster  and  bully  to  his  mferiors  is  by 
no  means  a  rare  figure,  but  the  imperturbable  self- 
respect  of  the  incorrigibly  fawning  Mr.  ColHns  is 
something  for  which  memory  is  slow  to  furnish 
parallels.  His  flunkyism  has  a  pecuHar  hterary 
virtue;  it  is  not  in  the  least  disinterested,  but,  in  a 
gross  way,  it  is  sincere.  He  wants  the  wages,  but 
he  likes  the  job.  What  is  poHcy  in  its  origin  becomes 
reUgion  in  the  process;  most  religions  have  doubtless 
grown  up  in  the  same  way.  Thackeray,  with  his 
procUvity  for  moral  discovery,  showed  us  later,  in 
his  account  of  Tom  Tusher,  how  caste-worship  might 
turn  inward.  "  'Twas  no  hypocrisy  in  him  to  flatter, 
but  the  bent  of  his  mind,  which  was  always  perfectly 
good-humom-ed,  obUging,  and  servile." 

Mr.  Colhns  is  amusing,  undoubtedly,  but  he 
fatigues  ahnost  as  much  as  he  enUvens.  The  pun- 
gency of  verbiage  has  been  overrated.  Even  in  the 
famous  and  excellent  Micawber,  it  is  doubtful  if  the 
rotundity  of  the  periods  is  to  be  counted  as  yeast 
or  dough  in  the  ingredients  of  that  eccentric  bread- 
making.  The  lawyers  in  Browning's  Ring  and  the 
Book  are  intolerable.  The  chief  satisfaction  of  laugh- 
ing at  a  character  is  to  feel  that  we  are  getting  the 
better  of  him,  and,  even. while  we  laugh  at  Mr. 
Colhns,  we  feel  that  his  mighty  periods  and  redoubt- 
able diction  are  getting  the  better  of  us.    The  laugh- 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  43 

ter  cannot  pierce  the  bore,  but  the  bore,  as  his  name 
wittily  indicates,  can  penetrate  anything,  including 
the  laugher. 

What  chiefly  troubles  me  in  Mr.  Colhns  is  the 
reconciliation  of  his  sophistications  with  his  clown- 
ishness.  There  is  not  the  sUghtest  artistic  reason 
why  a  man  who  writes  an  Enghsh  far  beyond  the 
capacity  of  most  professional  men  in  America,  and 
who  makes  a  point  of  scrupulous  adhesion  to  the 
ritual  of  politeness  should  not  insult  his  kinsfolk 
and  triumph  in  their  misfortunes.  But,  while  he 
may  be  as  low-minded  as  a  carter  in  the  substance 
of  his  communication,  I  doubt  if  he  could  address 
a  gentleman  in  these  terms: 

^The  death  of  your  daughter  would  have  been  a  blessing  in 
comparison  of  this.  And  it  is  the  more  to  be  lamented,  because 
there  is  reason  to  suppose,  as  my  dear  Charlotte  informs  me,  that 
this  licentiousness  of  behaviour  in  your  daughter  has  proceeded 
from  a  faulty  degree  of  indulgence;  though,  at  the  same  time, 
for  the  consolation  of  yourself  and  Mrs.  Bennet,  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  her  own  disposition  must  be  naturally  bad,  or  she 
could  not  be  guilty  of  such  an  enormity  at  so  early  an  age.  .  .  . 
They  agree  with  me  in  apprehending  that  this  false  step  in  one 
daughter  will  be  injurious  to  the  fortunes  of  all  the  others;  for 
who,  as  Lady  Catherine  herself  condescendingly  says,  will  con- 
nect themselves  with  such  a  family?  And  this  consideration 
leads  me  moreover  to  reflect,  with  augmented  satisfaction,  on  a 
certain  event  of  last  November;  for  had  it  been  otherwise,  I 
must  have  been  involved  in  all  your  sorrow  and  disgrace. 

This  passage  appears  to  be  enjoyed;  at  all  events 
the  letter  is  quoted  in  full  by  Goldwin  Smith  as  one 


44  JANE  AUSTEN 

of  the  "charming"  things  in  Pride  and  Prejudice. 
To  me  it  seems  neither  enjoyable  nor  true.  I  do  not 
quarrel  with  its  vindictiveness  or  cruelty;  I  quarrel 
with  its  open  vulgarity.  This  is  not  the  brutahty 
of  the  parsonage,  though  parsonages  may  be  brutal 
in  their  kind;  it  is  the  brutahty  of  the  sponging-house, 
the  barrack,  and  the  counter,  with  a  bedizenment  of 
Johnsonese  which  those  haunts  could  not  parallel. 
I  may  add  that  to  laugh  at  Mr.  ColHns  in  this  phase 
is  almost  a  form  of  comphcity,  and  admission  of  kin- 
ship. A  world  in  which  the  record  of  insults  to  sensi- 
tive women  in  calamity  can  amuse  the  refined  is  of 
one  substance  with  the  world  in  which  their  perpetra- 
tion can  delight  the  vulgar. 

''^Charlotte  Lucas,  who  marries  Mr.  Collins  for  pru- 
dential reasons,  is  hardly  drawn  at  all,  yet  her  situa- 
tion is  strangely  disquieting.  In  the  few  plain  words 
in  which  her  sedate  and  steadfast  fortitude  is  sug- 
gested to  the  wakeful  reader  there  is  the  inthnation 
of  a  tragedy  which  awes  us  Uke  the  neighborhood  of 
death.  That  the  martyrdom  is  voluntary  and  that 
the  martyr  is  pedestrian  and  calculating  does  not 
alter  the  decorous  grimness  of  a  situation  iti  the 
drawing  of  which  the  pencil  of  Alary  Wilkins  Free- 
man might  have  found  an  acrid  pleasure.  Charlotte 
says  nothing,  and  ]\Iiss  Austen  very  httle;  the  con- 
tinence of  both  is  impressive,  almost  dismaying. 
One  thinks  with  heartbreak  of  a  social  order  in  which 
a  woman  of  family  and  education  could  find  marriage 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  45 

with  Mr.  Collins  the  preferable  alternative.  Litera- 
ture' has  strange  repercussions,  and  in  this  quiet 
Enghsh  country-side,  amid  these  inexorable  de- 
corums, I  catch  a  faint  foreshadowing  of  the  dilemma 
(or  trilemma)  from  which  a  nimble  and  bustling 
French  dramatist  was  to  rend  the  veil  with  cruel 
abruptness  in  the  Three  Daughters  of  Monsieur 
Dupont.  Nothing  makes  me  respect  Miss  Austen 
more  than  her  portrayal  of  Charlotte  CoUins. 

Miss  Austen  requites  herself  for  the  hush  in  which 
she  has  enshrined  the  homespun  tragedy  of  Char- 
lotte by  the  shrillness  of  her  portrayal  of  the  arro- 
gant and  domineering  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh. 
They  say  Miss  Austen  is  quiet.  The  elderly  friends 
of  young  Marlow  in  the  Good-Natured  Man  said  that 
he  was  quiet.  They  had  not  seen  him  with  the  bar- 
maids. The  discoverers  of  quiet  in  Miss  Austen 
have  surely  not  seen  her  with  the  titled  aristocracy. 
Thackeray  was  a  high  colorist,  a  reveller  in  extremes, 
but  the  difference  between  Lady  Kew,  for  instance, 
and  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh  is  the  difference 
between  an  extravagant  human  being  and  a  per- 
former, a  trick  mule,  whom  his  trainer  exhibits  to 
a  deUghted  audience.  I  grant  the  excellence  of  the 
training  and  the  merit  of  the  tricks;  but  the  mule 
never  steps  off  the  platform.  Miss  Austen  in  a  quiet 
novel  which  leisurely  people  are  to  read  by  a  cosy 
fireside  draws  a  character  of  the  sort  which  MoHere 
or  Congreve  would  have  adapted  to  the  glare  of  a 


46  JANE  AUSTEN 

theatre — that  is  to  say,  she  excludes  all  points  but 
the  points  of  highest  reUef.  The  series  of  volleys 
of  which  this  woman's  conversation  is  made  is  in- 
consistent— I  will  not  say  with  the  virtue  or  the 
decency — but  with  the  laziness  and  fickleness — of 
ordinary  human  nature.  Her  daughter,  Miss  de 
Bourgh,  is  put  on  the  low  ration  of  half-a-dozen 
sentences  to  an  entire  book,  but  those  few  and 
scattered  words,  chosen  with  infallible  judgment, 
make  her  a  sounder  and  more  credible  human  being 
than  her  mother. 

Miss  Bingley,  like  many  of  Miss  Austen's  un- 
pleasant characters,  unites  the  diction  of  an  aca- 
demician with  the  manners  of  a  housemaid.  She  is 
clear  enough — ^unendurably  clear  in  many  particulars, 
but  I  have  a  sense  of  fissures,  of  lacunse,  in  the  de- 
Uneation.  She  is  hke  a  book  from  which  handfuls 
of  pages  have  been  casually  torn;  all  is  felt  to  be 
capable  of  unification,  but  the  connective  tissue  has 
been  snatched  away,  and  incompleteness  puts  on  the 
guise  of  incoherence. 

The  other  members  of  the  Darcy-Bingley  group 
may  be  passed  over  with  the  single  exception  of 
the  inconspicuous  but  unforgettable  Mr.  Hurst,  of 
whom  Miss  Austen  supphes  the  following  account: 
"As  for  Mr.  Hurst,  by  whom  Elizabeth  sat,  he  was 
an  indolent  man,  who  hved  only  to  eat,  drmk,  and 
play  at  cards;  who,  when  he  found  her  prefer  a  plain 
dish  to  a  ragout,  had  nothing  to  say  to  her."    Another 


PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE  47 

hint  or  two  of  equal  meagreness  are  furnished  later 
on,  and  Miss  Austen,  whose  concern  for  Mr.  Hurst 
seems  to  be  patterned  on  his  own  soUcitude  for 
EUzabeth,  has  completed  her  portrait  of  this  por- 
cine individual.  In  the  normal  writer — even  in  the 
normal  strong  writer — this  handful  of  vulgarities 
would  be  nothing;  yet  somehow  in  the  utterance  of 
these  meagre  phrases  Miss  Austen  has  smuggled  a 
soul,  or  whatever  in  his  primitive  make-up  takes  the 
place  of  a  soul,  into  the  sluggish  and  sensual  Mr. 
Hurst.  Of  just  this  form  of  magic  I  am  not  sure 
that  even  Shakespeare  has  given  proof. 

I  have  commented  on  sixteen  distinct  characters  in 
Pride  and  Prejudice.  I  doubt  if  another  novel  of 
its  size  can  show  sixteen  characters  who  invite  or 
permit  comment.  To  these  might  be  added  a  list 
of  persons  who  are  by  no  means  wholly  indistinct, 
Georgiana  Darcy,  Mrs.  Hurst,  the  two  Gardiners, 
Mrs.  PhiHps,  Colonel  FitzwilUam,  Maria  Lucas,  Sir 
WiUiam  Lucas.  Here  are  twenty-four  persons  to 
whom  individuality  in  various  amounts  is  allotted  in 
a  novel  which,  by  the  scale  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
and  George  EHot,  must  be  accounted  short.  Yet  the 
novel  has  not  that  effect  of  being  cumbered  or  ht- 
tered  with  characters  which  is  more  or  less  notice- 
able in  Scott's  Peveril  of  the  Peak  and  Mr.  Howells's 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes.  The  minor  figures  are  not 
tufted  or  ranged  in  scattered  groups,  and  the  emi- 
nence of  the  primary  actors  is  never  threatened  by  the 


48  JANE  AUSTEN 

intrusion  of  the  subordinates.  I  must  not  close  the 
chapter  without  noting  the  rather  frequent  shifts  of 
place  in  the  narrative,  and  the  ease  and  convenience 
with  which  the  transfers  are  effected  under  the  un- 
hurried but  unpausing  conductorship  of  Miss  Austen. 


I 


CHAPTER    III 
NORTHANGER  ABBEY 

Northanger  Abbey  has  a  motive  and  a  story,  but 
the  bearing  of  the  story  on  the  motive  is  very  ob- 
scure, and,  so  far  as  the  obscurity  is  penetrable, 
unsatisfactory.  The  author  wishes  to  reprove  the 
romanticism  of  a  fiction-reading  young  girl .  Sheridan 
had  done  the  same  thing  not  ineffectually  in  Lydia 
Languish,  and  an  older  form  of  the  same  dreamy 
and  paralyzing  romanticism  had  been  rebuked  by 
Lessing  in  the  Schwaermerei  of  the  heroine  of  Nathan 
the  Wise.  The  obvious  course  in  such  a  fable  is  to 
lead  the  heroine  from  daydreams  into  indiscretion 
and  from  indiscretion  into  misfortune  or  difficulty. 
Miss  Austen,  however,  hardly  pursues  this  course. 
Her  heroine  does  indeed  run  heedlessly  into  two  or 
three  imprudent  and  improper  acts  in  caUing  alone 
upon  the  Tilneys,  but  these  are  blunders  for  which 
it  is  difficult  to  make  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  the  Mysteries 
of  Udolpho  even  indirectly  responsible.  Her  roman- 
tic theory  of  General  Tilney's  conduct  to  which  I 
shall  refer  later  is  unproductive  of  any  evil  to  her- 
self; and  the  semi-romantic  misadventure  which 
expels  her  from  the  General's  house  has  its  real 

49 


50  JANE  AUSTEN 

origin  in  the  dustiest  of  calculations  in  which  Cath- 
erine has  neither  guilt  nor  share. 

Catherine  Morland  is  not  even  a  romantic  char- 
acter; she  seems  intended  as  a  rebuke  and  corrective 
to  romance. 

No  one  who  had  ever  seen  Catherine  Morland  in  her  infancy- 
would  have  supposed  her  born  to  be  a  heroine.  Her  situation  in 
life,  the  character  of  her  father  and  mother,  her  own  person  and 
disposition,  were  all  equally  against  her.  Her  father  was  a 
clergyman  without  being  neglected  or  poor,  and  a  very  respecta- 
ble man,  though  his  name  was  Richard,  and  he  had  never  been 
handsome.  He  had  a  considerable  independence,  besides  two 
good  Uvings,  and  he  was  not  in  the  least  addicted  to  locking 
up  his  daughters.  Her  mother  was  a  woman  of  useful  plain 
sense,  with  a  good  temper,  and,  what  is  more  remarkable,  with  a 
good  constitution.  She  had  three  sons  before  Catherine  was 
born;  and,  instead  of  dying  in  bringing  the  latter  into  the  world, 
as  any  body  might  expect,  she  still  Uved  on — Uved  to  have  six 
children  more — to  see  them  growing  up  around  her,  and  to 
enjoy  excellent  health  herself.  A  family  of  ten  children  will 
always  be  called  a  fine  family,  where  there  are  heads,  and  arms, 
and  legs  enough  for  the  number;  but  the  Morlands  had  little 
other  right  to  the  word,  for  they  were  in  general  very  plain,  and 
Catherine,  for  many  years  of  her  life,  as  plain  as  any.  She  had  a 
thin  awkward  figure,  a  sallow  skin  without  colour,  dark  lank 
hair,  and  strong  features;  so  much  for  her  person,  and  not  less 
unpropitious  for  heroism  seemed  her  mind. 

Miss  Austen  allows  her  heroine  a  plain  girlhood, 
but  her  courage  falters  at  the  threshold  of  maturity. 
She  is  no  Charlotte  Bronte  to  say  to  her  sisters  (in 
relation  to  Jane  Eyre):  ''I  will  show  you  a  heroine  as 
plain  and  as  small  as  myself,  who  shall  be  as  inter- 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  51 

esting  as  any  of  yours."  This  is  implacable  self- 
discipline.  Jane  Austen  was  not  bred  among  the 
rigors  and  self-macerations  of  Haworth.  Abnega- 
tion in  Kent  and  Hampshire  has  its  limits;  and  when 
Catherine  is  to  visit  Bath  and  see  young  men,  nature, 
equally  friendly  to  budding  girls  and  rising  novehsts, 
is  called  in  to  renovate  her  physique.  The  conces- 
sion is  large,  but  Catherine  is  not  wholly  untrue  to 
the  tradition  of  her  noisy,  dirty,  and  athletic  child- 
hood. Her  first  exploit,  on  venturing  into  the  world, 
is  to  fall  instantly  and  irreparably  in  love  with  a 
young  man  whose  main  attraction  is  his  raillery,  and 
the  prime  object  of  whose  raillery  is  the  absurdities  of 
the  producers  and  consumers  of  romance.  At  the 
end  of  the  book  she  marries  this  young  man,  magnan- 
imously overlooking  his  possession  of  a  large  income 
and  an  enviable  position. 

There  is,  however,  in  Catherine's  nature  another 
coil  for  the  analyst  to  imwind.  She  is  unromantic, 
but  she  is  romanticistic.  At  Bath  she  forms  a  passion 
for  Mrs.  Radcliffe  which  so  far  colors  her  view  of  hfe 
as  to  impart  vividness  to  her  expectations  of  North- 
anger  Abbey.  Miss  Austen,  in  a  word,  has  com- 
missioned the  same  young  person  to  serve  as  an- 
tithesis to  the  Radcliffe  heroine  and  as  illustration 
of  the  flightiness  of  the  Radcliffe  reader.  I  do  not 
say  that  the  combination  is  impossible;  from  reader 
to  heroine  is  a  far  cry;  and,  in  reading,  a  man  may 
court  those  ideaUsms  which  subjection  to  the  God  of 


52  JANE  AUSTEN 

things  as  they  are  has  remorselessly  banished  from 
his  practice.  But  Miss  Austen's  art  seems  to  me 
unwieldy  and  unthrifty  in  the  appointment  of  the 
same  person  to  both  parts.  It  may  be  said  that  the 
difference  between  Catherine's  real  and  imaginary 
self  is  the  point  of  the  book.  If  so,  I  cannot  think 
that  the  point  is  effectively  made.  We  remember 
the  case  of  Juha  Mills  in  David  Copperfield — Juha 
who  sang  "Affection's  Dirge,"  and  married  an  old 
Scotch  Croesus  with  great  flaps  of  ears.  We  remem- 
ber the  case  of  Blanche  Amory,  who  sighed  for  a 
paladin,  and,  after  a  vain  assault  upon  a  brewer, 
married  a  cook.  If  Catherine  had  married  dollars 
after  yielding  her  heart  or  her  fancy  to  witticisms, 
she  might  have  been  counted  among  these  renegades 
to  sentiment.  But  since  her  first,  last,  and  only 
object  is  Henry  Tilney,  who  is  neither  romantic 
enough  nor  unromantic  enough  to  make  his  capture 
a  pointed  victory  for  either  side,  I  cannot  see  that 
her  daydreams  really  becloud  her  mind  or  that  her 
conduct  really  unmasks  her  disposition. 

The  truth  is  that  the  satire  on  romance  has  no 
real  or  logical  relation  to  the  slender  plot  of  North- 
anger  Abbey.  Imagine  the  story  to  have  taken 
shape  by  itself;  then  four  additions  or  modifications 
will  bring  the  novel  to  its  present  form.  First,  a  few 
paragraphs  will  be  dehghtfully  rewritten  from  the 
point  of  view  of  their  contrast  with  the  habits  and 
prescriptions  of  romance.    Second,  Catherine  Mor- 


\ 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  53 

land  is  lent  a  copy  of  the  Mysteries  of  Udolpho. 
Third,  the  addition  of  a  few  Gothic  windows  and 
feudal  trappings  converts  General  Tilney's  country 
house  into  an  abbey.  Fourth,  Catherine  is  pre- 
sented with  two  or  three  romantic  misconceptions 
which  are  dispelled  without  the  faintest  damage  to 
herself  or  the  sUghtest  profit  to  the  story.  The  satire 
can  be  lifted  clean  out  of  the  frame  of  the  narrative, 
and  the  narrative  will  not  even  show  a  dent. 

The  delusions  which  are  foisted  upon  Catherine 
are  the  least  acceptable  portions  of  the  tale.  She 
beheves  she  has  discovered  an  ancient  manuscript  in  a 
cavity  of  a  black  and  gold  Japan  cabinet  in  her  bed- 
chamber; the  morning  fight  reveals  nothing  worse 
than  a  laundry  bill.  The  childishness  of  this  adven- 
ture would  seem  to  be  pretty  evenly  divided  between 
Miss  Austen  and  Catherine.  This  is  the  grade  of 
burlesque  which  the  Sunday  newspaper  might  be 
glad  to  admit  to  its  columns  of  syndicated  fiction, 
or  which  the  school-girl  essayist  might  read  aloud 
to  the  willing  laughter  of  uncritical  classmates.  The 
second  point  is  a  fittle  graver,  but  even  more  ridic- 
ulous. Catherine  frames  the  notion  that  General 
Tilney  has  murdered  his  wife.  This  nightmare  is 
detected  and  gently  dispelled  by  the  general's 
younger  son.  On  first  thought  we  are  incfined  to 
say  that  the  attribution  of  the  mistake  to  any  person 
in  his  senses  is  as  crazy  as  the  mistake  itseK.  A 
Uttle  introspection  shows  us  that  chimeras  as  frantic 


54  JANE  AUSTEN 

as  this  do  knock  at  minds  whose  sanity  we  are  indis- 
posed to  question,  and  that  they  are  received  with  a 
hospitahty  which  the  hosts  themselves  would  scoff 
at  in  another  person.  This  is  a  fact,  and  yet  our 
objection  to  the  incident  in  Jane  Austen  proves 
impervious  to  our  recognition  of  the  fact.  The 
truth  is  that  delusions  of  this  sort  are  on  the  same 
footing  as  dreams  in  their  adaptation  to  record. 
Dreams  are  as  much  a  part  of  experience  as  purchases 
or  conflagrations,  but  their  irrelevance  to  ordinary 
reahty  is  such  that  they  are  remanded  to  silence 
except  where  their  aptness  or  their  influence  is 
extraordinary,  or  where  emphasis  is  concert;  a.te<i 
on  the  hinterlands  of  the  imagination.  In  ;Miss 
Austen's  cool,  clearheaded,  good-humored  narrative 
a  vagary  of  this  sort  seems  as  misplaced  as  a  secivt 
^  panel  in  a  railway  station. 
/*"  The  main  plot  may  be  condensed  into  two  or 
three  sentences.  Catherine  Morland,  in  a  firs: 
sojourn  at  Bath,  falls  in  love  with  a  vivacious  young 
clergyman,  Henry  Tilney,  whose  response  to  her 
affection  is  not  the  less  sincere  for  being  gentle  and 
leisurely.  Catherine  spends  several  weeks  at  North- 
anger  Abbey  by  invitation  of  Henry's  father, 
General  Tilney,  by  whose  order  she  is  later  on 
ejected  from  the  house  with  a  cmel  abruptness  un- 
softened  by  explanations.  The  General  had  invited 
her  on  the  baseless  report  that  she  was  rich,  and  now 
drives  her  out  on  the  better  grounded,  but  not  quite 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  55 

accurate,  report  that  she  is  penniless.  The  young  son 
follows  Catherine  to  her  home,  and  marriage  in- 
stantly follows  on  the  ungracious  consent  of  the 
muddle-headed  father.  The  plot,  though  scant,  is 
spacious  enough  to  include  two  gross  improbabiUties, 
that  the  general  should  be  prepared  to  risk  his 
son's  happiness  with  a  girl  whose  fortune  was  at- 
tested only  by  rumor,  and  that  he  should  brave  the 
tongues  of  the  county  by  an  act  of  violence  which 
stamped  him  as  dupe  no  less  than  ruffian. 

I  have  omitted  certain  minor  trains  of  incident; 
my  abihty  to  omit  them  in  a  summary  of  the  main 
plot  is  proof  enough  of  their  logical  detachment. 
Isabella  Thorpe,  Catherine's  friend  in  Bath,  engages 
herseK  to  a  young  clergyman,  whom  she  jilts  for  the 
sake  of  a  young  captain,  by  whom  she  is  ruthlessly 
and  promptly  flung  aside.  These  circumstances  are 
related  to  Catherine's  story  only  by  the  purely 
mechanical  Unks  that  the  clergyman  is  Catherine's 
brother  and  the  captain  is  Henry  Tilney's.  There  is 
also  a  bragging  and  brawhng  young  bully,  John 
Thorpe,  who  makes  slapdash  love  to  Catherine 
between  oaths  and  whip-crackings.  An  attempt  has 
been  made  to  give  this  fact  a  bearing  on  Catherine's 
relations  with  the  Tilneys,  but  the  device  betrays  as 
much  awkwardness  as  conscience.  General  Tilney's 
informant  as  to  Catherine's  wealth  and  as  to  her 
poverty  is  John  Thorpe.  Now  John  Thorpe's  bluster 
hardly   imposes   on   the   artless   Catherine,   whose 


56  JANE  AUSTEN 

ignorance  at  eighteen  is  abysmal;  General  Tilney  is  a 
man  of  the  world :  yet  in  a  matter  vital  to  his  interest 
General  Tilney  reposes  implicit  confidence  in  the 
word  of  a  stranger  whose  blackguardism  is  vocif- 
erous. 

It  has  been  correctly  observed  that  the  second 
part  of  Northanger  Abbey  is  less  interesting  than  the 
first.  There  is  a  curious  break  and  falling-off  in  the 
middle  of  the  tale  which  I  can  only  explain  on  the 
theory  that  it  underwent  some  mysterious  internal 
lesion.  It  was  prosperous  and  joyous  in  its  own 
course;  it  swerved  from  that  course  without  ade- 
quate reason;  and  it  ceased  to  prosper  and  rejoic.  . 
The  Bath  part  has  a  charm  pecuUar  to  itself  ::) 
Miss  Austen's  work,  a  charm  almost  anticipative  of 
the  lighter  and  readier  touch  of  the  later  decades  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  There  is  a  brisk  patter  of 
incident,  a  light,  sprightly  cursiveness,  a  gayety  of 
movement  that  sweeps  along  even  the  disappoint- 
ments and  heartaches  in  the  alacrity  of  its  buoyant 
course.  In  a  word  it  is  the  sort  of  story  that  thrives 
in  a  pump-room  and  mopes  in  an  abbey.  Why,  then, 
send  it  to  an  abbey?  I  do  not  mind  an  II  Penseroso 
after  my  U Allegro,  if  I  can  have  a  Milton  to  write 
it  for  me;  but  Miss  Austen's  II  Penseroso  would 
tempt  nobody  to  forsake  "the  gay  motes  that 
people  the  sunbeam"  in  Bath  or  any  other  cheerful 
watering-place.  Miss  Austen  has  not  even  the 
excuse  of  havi'fug  wound  up  her  affairs  in  Bath.    Her 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  57 

affairs  in  Bath  are  most  distinctly  not  wound  up; 
the  affairs  of  Isabella  plead  for  further  elucidation  on 
the  spot,  and  John  Thorpe's  pursuit  of  Catherine 
actually  clamors  for  a  settlement  of  its  claims  in  the 
place  of  its  origin.  But  Miss  Austen  packs  us  off, 
bag  and  baggage,  with  a  peremptoriness  which  she 
might  have  learned  from  the  hare-brained  General 
Tilney  himself.  Of  course  there  is  the  satire  on 
romance  to  supply  a  motive;  but  if  the  satire  on 
romance  is  to  furnish  us  with  no  better  amusement 
than  we  find  at  Northanger  Abbey,  I  think  the 
ghost  of  Mrs.  Radchffe  is  avenged. 

The  first  remark  on  Catherine  Morland's  character 
has  been  anticipated  in  my  comments  on  the  plot. 
She  has  a  taste  for  romantic  novels,  but  the  texture 
of  her  mind  is  wholly  unromantic.  Romanticism  has 
not  struck  in;  it  merely  dusts  the  surface  of  the 
character.  Her  charm  Hes  very  largely  in  an  in- 
cipient good  sense  which  is  held  down  for  the  moment 
by  her  ignorance  of  reaUty  and  her  deHght  in  fiction. 
The  body  has  barely  flowered,  and  the  mind  is  still 
unblown,  and  the  result  is  a  grace  which  is  rather 
seasonal  than  personal.  Her  mind  is  not  only  simple; 
it  is  plain;  she  will  pass  from  girlhood  to  matronhood 
without  any  interval  of  young-ladyship.  Strangely 
enough,  I  find  her  the  most  winning  of  Miss  Austen's 
heroines  in  the  absence  of  nearly  every  quaUty  which 
makes  the  heroines  of  other  noveUsts  pleasant  in 
my  eyes.    I  am  rather  shocked  I   find  myself  pre- 


58  JANE  AUSTEN 

ferring  her  to  Elizabeth,  that  "darling  child,"  on 
whom  her  parent  lavished  a  fondness  that  reminds 
one  a  very  Uttle  of  Sir  Walter  EUiot  and  the  Ehza- 
beth  whom  he  bhndly  favored. 

I  think  I  am  drawn  to  Catherine  by  the  fact  that 
she  is  the  only  one  of  the  heroines  who  acts  like  a 
young  girl.  Anne  EUiot's  youthfulness  is  past;  she 
already  wears  the  willow,  and  her  attitude  imitates 
its  droop.  Emma,  Ehzabeth,  and  Elinor  (they  run 
to  E's  like  the  early  Saxon  kings)  are  not  really 
young.  I  reject  the  futiUty  of  baptismal  registers 
and  the  vain  umpireship  of  the  family  Bible.  They 
all  impress  us  as  having  sat  on  boards;  we  are  lucky 
if  we  do  not  feel  that  they  are  sitting  on  them  in 
our  very  presence.  Marianne's  conversation  is  ten 
years  older  than  her  behavior.  I  shall  be  told  that 
Fanny  Price  is  a  young  girl.  Miss  Becky  Sharp  was 
obUged  by  circumstances  to  be  her  own  mamma;  to 
my  mind,  Fanny  Price  is  obhged  by  nature  to  be  her 
own  maiden  aunt.  But  Catherine  IMorland  is  young 
in  the  fashion  of  young  girls  whom  I  actually  know, 
simple,  warm-hearted,  pleasure-loving,  difhdent  be- 
tween her  impulses  and  eager  behind  her  shyness,  a 
few  strong  interests  and  vivid  hldngs  checkering  the 
unresponsiveness  of  girlhood  to  the  proffers  and 
urgencies  of  Hfe.  Miss  Austen  has  stinted  her  of 
attributes  and  yet  kept  her  distinct.  The  note  of  her 
small  but  clear  personality  is  never  hushed  in  that 
Bath  turmoil  in  which  Isabella  shrills  and  John 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  59 

Thorpe  bellows.  Isabella  and  John  may  silence 
Catherine,  but  her  very  silences  are  audible.  There 
is  httle  to  Catherine  perhaps,  but  what  there  is  is 
firm.  You  may  call  her  a  particle  if  you  Uke,  but  the 
particle  is  a  granule. 

Henry  Tilney  is  a  dancing  shape,  an  image  gay;  in 
other  words,  his  humor  is  the  best  and  biggest  part 
of  him.  His  virtues  are  immistakable,  but  they 
efface  themselves  in  the  company  of  his  spirits  like 
obhging  aunts  and  grandmammas  in  the  presence  of 
madcap  juniors.  Goldwin  Smith  finds  him  so  like  his 
clerical  brother,  Edmund  Bertram,  as  to  threaten  the 
stability  of  Macaulay's  famous  observation  on  the 
unlikeness  of  Miss  Austen's  young  divines.  To  my 
thought  he  resembles  Edmund  Bertram  about  as 
much  as  tomato  salad  resembles  peach  marmalade. 
His  gayeties  and  railleries  are  not  definitively  clerical, 
and  in  this  point  he  reminds  one  of  Mr.  Breckon, 
Mr.  Howells's  young  Unitarian  pastor  in  the  Ken- 
tons.  Mr.  Breckon  paid  his  caUing  the  deference  of 
an  occasional  doubt  as  to  whether  a  person  so  jovial 
and  quizzical  as  himself  was  qualified  to  lead  his 
fellow-men  in  worship.  No  such  doubt  visits  the 
mind  of  Mr.  Tilney.  The  clerical  profession  in  Miss 
Austen's  day  appears  never  to  have  pestered  its 
votaries  with  any  scruple  as  to  their  qualifications; 
in  fact  it  gave  httle  trouble  of  any  sort.  Its  un- 
obtrusiveness  was  quite  endearing. 

I  confess  that  I  am  drawn  to  a  young  man  who  can 


y 


60  JANE  AUSTEN 

make  much  of  a  young  girl  in  the  very  act  of  mak- 
ing fun  of  her;  the  combination  is  sound.  Henry's 
treatment  of  Catherine,  if  free  in  appearance,  is 
really  delicate.  Perhaps  amusement  and  condescen- 
sion pass  a  little  too  speedily  into  love;  if  the  growth 
of  his  affection  is  too  slow  to  keep  pace  with  Cath- 
erine's, it  is  quite  swift  enough  to  outrun  nature. 
One  of  the  capital  points  in  which  Miss  Austen  flouts 
the  romantic  tradition  is  conveyed  in  the  following 
words:  ''I  must  confess  that  his  affection  originated 
in  nothing  better  than  gratitude;  or,  in  other  words, 
that  a  persuasion  of  her  partiahty  for  him  had  been 
the  only  cause  of  giving  her  a  serious  thought."  On 
this  point  Miss  Austen's  courage  is  dehghtful,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  in  principle  she  is  entirely 
correct.  The  only  adverse  comment  on  the  specific 
case  is  that  gratitude  is  among  the  most  fragile  of 
human  traits,  and  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  a 
plank  so  slender  should  adequately  bridge  a  chasm 
so  broad  as  that  which  divides  the  minds  at  least  of 
Catherine  Morland  and  Henry  Tilney.  IVIiss  Austen 
crows  over  the  insulted  romanticist  in  making  Heniy 
Tilney  love  Catherine  Morland  because  she  loved 
him.  But  does  not  romanticism  turn  the  tables  on 
Miss  Austen  when  she  arranges  a  match  between 
so  ill-matched  a  young  couple  with  an  appended 
guarantee  of  lasting  happiness?  Catherme's  strong 
points  are  youth  and  artlessness,  and  both  these 
qualities   have   a   reckoning   to   make   with   time. 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  61 

Gratitude  is  a  shortlived  passion.  Can  we  trust  the 
longevity  of  a  love  which  is  its  offspring? 

Of  Henry  Tilney's  relatives  little  need  be  said. 
The  general  is  an  ogre  quite  unfit  to  be  the  father  of 
the  young  prince  in  a  modern  fairy  tale,  and  conducts 
hiniseK  with  a  bhnd  folly  from  which  even  the 
possession  of  a  single  eye  should  have  protected  him. 
He  qualifies  himself  equally  for  the  straitjacket  and 
the  halter.  EUnor  Tilney  is  Uttle  more  than  a  suave 
excuse  for  the  approximation  of  Henry  and  Cath- 
erine. 

The  Bath  party  cannot  be  quite  so  brusquely  dis- 
missed. Mrs.  Allen,  whom  Miss  Austen  despatches 
in  a  few  cavaher  strokes  of  brilUant  exaggeration, 
is  perhaps  as  good  a  portrayal  of  pure  inanity  as  the 
history  of  hterature  can  supply.  The  creation  of 
Mrs.  Allen  points  to  a  momentary  suspension  in 
Nature's  proverbial  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum.  She 
undertakes  the  duties  of  a  chaperon  with  that  cheer- 
fulness which  is  the  outgrowth  of  a  complete  in- 
difference to  their  fulfilment.  She  is  the  most 
amiable  and  the  most  selfish  of  human  beings,  and 
human  nature  is  of  course  both  shamefully  maligned 
and  tingUngly  enUvened  in  the  mere  tip  or  extremity 
of  itseK  which  it  sees  reproduced  in  the  unequalled 
Mrs.  Allen.  The  odd  thing — the  all  but  impossible 
thing  outside  of  Miss  Austen — is  that  inanity  should 
be  clean-cut.  Even  emptiness  for  Miss  Austen  is  not 
vague.    If  she  drew  a  zero,  she  would  give  it  angles. 


62  JANE  AUSTEN 

Miss  Austen's  treatment  of  the  redoubtable 
Isabella  Thorpe  may  be  said  to  have  found  a  model 
in  the  dash  and  smartness  of  Isabella  herself.  On  the 
surface  this  young  lady  is  all  modesty,  sensibihty, 
devotion.  Inwardly,  she  is  heartless,  impudent, 
perfidious.  Hypocrisy  is  inevitable,  and  it  is  the 
fashion  of  this  hypocrisy  that  imparts  to  Miss  Aus- 
ten's treatment  its  rare  vivacity  and  its  real  unsound- 
ness. Isabella  Thorpe  is  fool  as  well  as  hypocrite, 
and,  at  the  very  moment  when  her  hypocrisy  is 
covering  her  meanness,  her  folly  is  drawing  away 
the  screen  from  her  meanness  and  her  hypocrisy 
alike.  Her  rule  is  to  say  one  thing  and  within  the 
space  of  five  minutes  to  do  or  say  something  that 
is  in  open  -  and  virtent  contradiction  to  the  initial 
speech.  The  rawness  of  this  method  is  incontesta- 
ble. Even  a  fool  would  avoid  the  constant  recur- 
rence of  these  obvious  clashes,  and  Isabella's  excuses 
show  an  agihty  which  ought  to  have  fitted  her  to 
evade  the  continual  necessity  of  evasion.  It  is  Miss 
Austen's  way  to  bestow  great  alertness  on  persons 
to  whom  she  peremptorily  refuses  an  atom  of  sense. 

In  view  of  the  widespread  beUef  in  the  deUcacy  of 
Miss  Austen's  craftsmanship — a  behef  which  is  as 
beautifully  justified  by  a  part  of  her  work  as  it  is 
refuted  and  mocked  by  another — I  shall  clarify  my 
point  a  little  further  by  contrasting  Isabella  with 
Hialmar  Ekdal  in  Ibsen's  Wild  Duck.  Hialmar,  Uke 
Isabella,  is  a  sentimental  hypocrite,  masking  selfish- 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY  63 

ness  and  heartlessness  under  professions  of  tender- 
ness and  magnanimity.  Ibsen's  portrayal,  though 
very  forcible,  is  not  remarkably  deUcate;  it  scores  too 
constantly  against  Hialmar  to  maintain  an  agreement 
with  reaUty.  But  in  comparison  with  Miss  Austen's 
Isabella,  Ibsen's  not  over-scrupulous  portrait  is 
delicacy  itself.  Hialmar,  like  Isabella,  falls  into 
open  self-contradiction.  The  beer  which  his  plain- 
tiveness  has  refused  is  accepted  in  the  next  second  by 
his  magnanimity,  and  his  semi-abstraction  consumes 
the  bread-and-butter  which  his  self-respect  had 
imperiously  dechned.  But  in  a  very  long  and  minute 
portrayal  this  unsoftened  self-reversal  occurs  only  a 
very  few  times.  Other  means  are  freely  used  for 
bringing  out  the  weakness  of  the  character;  there  are 
even  times,  though  never  long  times,  in  which  the 
exposure  of  its  httleness  is  suspended.  Miss  Austen's 
method  is  as  monotonous  as  the  character  she  draws 
is  unshaded.  It  is  only  fair  to  the  Enghshwoman  to 
repeat  that  she  has  not  failed  to  attain  the  vivacity 
to  which  temperance  and  truth  have  been  so  ruth- 
lessly sacrificed.  Those  who  smarten  up  reahty 
have  their  reward,  and  the  reward  in  Miss  Austen's 
Isabella  is  considerable. 

The  last  character  that  demands  attention  is 
John  Thorpe.  What  will  Jane  Austen  do  with  such  a 
character?  That  a  keen  woman  should  succeed  with 
a  young  springal  and  prodigal  hke  Tom  Bertram, 
that  she  should  succeed  with  unbending  and  power- 


64  JANE  AUSTEN 

ful  masculinity  in  Mr.  Knightley,  need  not  surprise 
us  overmuch.  But  what  will  the  sheltered  and  cir- 
cumspect spinster,  the  young  girl  bom  and  bred 
in  an  Enghsh  vicarage,  make  of  a  sheer  blackguard 
mildly  qualified  with  dunce  and  booby?  The  answer 
is  that  the  success  is  extraordinary.  John  Thorpe  is 
drawn  with  absolute  clearness,  with  great  apparent 
accuracy,  and  with  a  hidden  zest  from  which  a  cynic 
might  infer  that  the  horror  women  feel  for  insolence 
and  rudeness  is  often  only  an  inverted  sympathy. 
If  Sheridan  had  dramatized  Northanger  Abbey  for 
Drury  Lane,  I  doubt  if  he  would  have  found  it 
necessary  to  add  one  coarsening  or  one  enhvening 
touch  to  the  demure  novehst's  portrayal  of  this  loud- 
mouthed and  bullying  young  Enghslmaan.  In  saying 
this  I  concede  that  the  picture  is  highly  charged,  but 
the  excess,  if  I  may  be  indulged  in  the  paradox,  is 
not  excessive.  What  is  excess  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  painstaking  and  conscientious  historian 
may  be  moderation  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
painstaking  and  conscientious  artist.  The  cases  of 
John  and  Isabella  are  essentially  different.  Isabella 
is  disclosed  by  an  obvious  artifice,  by  assigning  per- 
manence to  what  in  the  real  world  is  merely  occa- 
sional. But  loudness  and  impudence  are  capable  of 
indefinite  prolongation  even  in  hfe  itself,  and  ]\liss 
Austen  has  done  nothing  more  than  magnify  the 
truth  without  altering  its  quahty. 


CHAPTER    IV 

MANSFIELD  PARK 

In  Mansfield  Park  there  is  a  concentration  which 
contrasts  pleasantly  with  the  width  and  diversity 
which  give  the  character  of  polypi  to  Sense  and  Sensi- 
bility and  Pride  and  Prejudice.  Mansfield  Park  is 
frame  as  well  as  title;  for  most  of  the  book  the  fixture 
of  the  story  at  the  Park  seems  as  michangeable  as 
that  of  Lady  Bertram  herself,  and  the  removal  of 
the  tale  to  Portsmouth,  with  the  other  baggage  of 
Fanny  Price,  surprises  us  almost  to  the  point  of 
dismay.  We  had  grown  so  used  to  acres  and  turbot. 
Again,  the  characters  in  the  novel  are  relatively 
few,  and  form  what  may  be  called  a  closed  circuit. 
The  effect  of  cushioned  and  curtained  privacy  is 
highly  marked,  and  the  social  animation,  the  provi- 
sion of  which  throughout  the  tale  is  rather  hberal, 
adds,  as  it  were,  the  sparkle  of  firelight  to  this 
shielded  and  luxurious  tranquilUty.  At  this  point, 
however,  we  face  one  of  the  baffling  paradoxes  of  the 
book.  The  material  enclosure  seems  to  imply, 
almost  to  require,  a  corresponding  moral  intimacy, 
but  the  people  whom  Mansfield  Park  secludes  and 
embosoms  are  not  intimate,  are  scarcely  even  fa- 
mihar.     Between   the   two   sisters,   no   sympathy; 

65 


66  JANE  AUSTEN 

between  the  two  brothers,  no  sympathy;  between 
brothers  and  sisters,  no  sympathy.  Between  parents 
and  children  the  case  is  hardly  better:  the  father 
sits  on  a  dais;  the  mother  hes  on  a  sofa.  The  sugared 
relations  between  Edmund  and  Fanny  are  agreeable 
enough  in  their  studied  way,  but  they  neither  com- 
pensate nor  console  us  for  the  want  of  ease,  of  flexibil- 
ity, in  the  propinquities  of  this  divergent  family. 
The  leopardlike  presence  of  the  sinuous  and  faintly 
sinister  Crawfords  adds  its  modicum  to  the  curious 
unrest,  the  sense  of  distance  in  proximity,  of  peril  in 
an  asylum,  which  follows  the  reader  throughout  this 
reassuring  and  disquieting  tale. 

Mrs.  Price,  wife  of  an  indigent  heutenant  of 
marines  in  Portsmouth  and  Lady  Bertram,  a  rich 
baronet's  lady  in  Northamptonshire,  are  sisters. 
The  baronet's  family  offer  to  adopt  Mrs.  Price's 
eldest  daughter,  Fanny,  and  the  hardships  of  rearing 
a  large  family  on  a  small  income  are  revealed  in  the 
promptitude  of  Mrs.  Price's  grateful  acceptance. 
Transferred  to  Mansfield  Park,  the  ten-year-old 
girl  grows  up  with  the  marvellous  rapidity  with 
which  that  operation — so  tedious  in  real  life — is 
accompHshed  by  the  heroines  of  fiction.  Fanny  has 
made  haste  to  qualify  herself  for  the  part  of  heroine 
by  forming  an  almost  instant,  ardent,  and  constant 
attachment  for  her  cousin,  Edmund  Bertram,  the 
only  young  person  in  the  house  for  whom  benevolence 
to  a  penniless  cousin  can  take  a  brighter  shape  than 


MANSFIELD  PARK  67 

amused  or  condescending  toleration.  With  the  en- 
gagement of  Maria  Bertram  to  a  neighboring  mag- 
nate, Mr.  Rushworth,  a  transaction  in  which  the 
young  lady's  heart  is  suavely  neutral,  and  with  the 
installation  at  the  rectory  of  Henry  and  Mary  Craw- 
ford, brother  and  sister  of  the  rector's  wife,  the  story 
is,  in  the  stm"dy  parlance  of  the  American  street, 
^'open  for  business." 

An  attraction  speedily  grows  up  between  Edmund 
Bertram,  who  is  destined  for  the  church,  and  Mary 
Crawford,  in  whom  a  fondness  for  deriding  clergy- 
men is  not  the  only  symptom  of  worldliness.  Miss 
Austen  is  adept  in  the  accumulation  of  evidence,  but 
in  the  evocation  of  moral  or  psychical  process  she 
has  httle  skill,  and  the  relation  between  Edmund  and 
Mary  is  kept  almost  at  a  standstill,  without  engage- 
ment or  unmistakable  declaration,  till  very  close  to 
the  end  of  the  novel.  There  is  affection  and  mis- 
giving on  both  sides.  If,  to  appropriate  the  language 
of  Bishop  Blougram,  on  Edmund  Bertram's  part  it 
is  a  Hfe  ''of  faith  diversified  by  doubt,"  on  Mary 
Crawford's  it  is  a  "hfe  of  doubt  diversified  by  faith." 
While  in  this  quarter  matters  assume  what  we  might 
describe  as  permanence  in  instabihty,  Henry  Craw- 
ford, after  exhausting  the  piquancy  of  alternate 
courtship  of  the  two  Misses  Bertram,  centres  his 
assiduities  on  Maria.  A  visit  of  the  Mansfield  party 
to  Mr.  Rushworth's  place  and  the  undertaking  of  an 
amateur  play  at  Mansfield  itseK  are  friendly  to 


68  JANE  AUSTEN 

Mr.  Crawford's  success  in  this  cruel  and  ignoble 
enterprise. 

To  Miss  Austen  they  are  no  less  friendly  than  to 
Mr.  Crawford.  In  scenes  half  social,  half  domestic, 
where  the  characters  are  many,  the  setting  com- 
pact, the  regroupings  facile,  and  the  openings  for 
minute  but  intimate  and  zestful  diplomacy  pretty 
frequent,  her  spirits  rise  and  her  art  brightens,  and 
the  trip  and  play  chapters  must  be  classed  with  the 
signal  enUvenments  of  the  book.  That  Mr.  Rush- 
worth  is  a  nullity  for  Maria  and  Maria  herself  is  a 
nullity  for  the  reader,  that  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether 
her  detachment  from  her  brainless  suitor  is  to  be 
viewed  as  ruin  or  salvation,  are  drawbacks  whic  , 
are  swept  aside,  for  the  time  being  at  least,  by  the 
alacrity  and  momentum  of  the  narrative.  That 
Miss  Austen's  condemnation  of  the  theatricals  is 
unquahfied  does  not  prevent  her  from  portraying 
them  with  that  gusto  which,  in  an  impish  world,  is  so 
often  the  associate  of  disapproval.  A  careful  Amer- 
ican parent  would  find  no  fault  with  the  securities 
for  propriety  and  innocence  which  accompany  the 
rehearsals  of  the  play.  There  is  no  audience,  no 
professional  man  except  a  scene-painter,  no  actors 
from  outside  except  a  guest  staying  in  the  house  and 
the  brother  and  sister  of  the  parish  rector's  wife; 
the  mother  of  the  family  is  informed,  consenting,  and 
on  the  spot.  For  all  that,  Miss  Austen,  who  has  a 
taste  for  wine,  indulgence  for  cards,  and  approbation 


MANSFIELD  PARK  69 

for  balls,  and  who  had  seen  her  own  kinsfolk  taking 
part  in  private  theatricals  in  her  father's  bam,  is 
inexorable  in  her  reprobation  of  the  sport.  Her 
mingled  zest  and  horror  remind  one  a  Uttle  of  the 
comment  of  the  maiden  aunt,  Franziska,  in  Suder- 
mann's  Heimat,  on  learning  that  her  operatic  niece 
drank  a  mixture  of  coffee  and  chocolate,  "Horrible — 
but  it  must  be  good." 

On  the  arrival  of  Sir  Thomas  Bertram  from 
Antigua,  the  theatricals  dissolve — the  word  is  exact — 
and  Henry  Crawford  rides  away  to  Bath.  The 
brusqueness  of  his  treatment  of  Maria  seems  almost 
copied  by  Miss  Austen  in  her  cavaher  desertion  of  an 
affair  with  which  she  has  Hngeringly  and  soHcitously 
daUied.  The  train  so  heedfully  laid  is  not  touched 
off,  and  the  novehst,  who  is  as  unfeeling  toward 
Maria  as  Henry  himself,  despatches  her  ''agony"  in 
a  sunmiary  paragraph.  Maria  bears  her  loss  with 
a  fortitude  which  culminates  in  her  marriage  with 
Mr.  Rush  worth. 

The  story  has  now  reached  a  halting-place.  (It 
must  be  understood  that  all  this  time  the  Edmimd- 
Mary  affair  has  been  going  on  or,  better,  standing 
still,  or  better  yet,  has  attained  a  combination  of 
going  on  and  standing  still  by  simply  oscillating.) 
Miss  Austen  has  no  sooner  despatched  Henry  Craw- 
ford to  Bath  than  she  discovers  that  she  has  the  most 
urgent  occupation  for  him  at  Mansfield.  That 
occupation  is  the  courtship  of  Fanny  Price.    This 


70  JANE  AUSTEN 

move  is  disconcerting  to  the  reader.  If  there  is  no 
positive  answer  to  the  question,  "Why  should  not 
Henry  Crawford  fall  in  love  with  Fanny  Price?" 
there  is  hkewise  no  positive  answer  to  the  question, 
"Why  should  he  fall  in  love  with  her?";  and  the 
absence  of  an  answer  to  the  second  question  is  in 
effect  an  answer  to  the  first.  When  a  certain  point  in 
novels  has  been  reached,  all  new  events  should  have 
traceable  pedigrees;  and  this  movement  of  Craw- 
ford's resembles  the  MerUn  of  the  older  Arthurian 
tales  in  being  a  child  without  a  father.  It  might  be 
defined  with  equal  accuracy  as  a  father  without  a 
child.  It  is  the  main  business,  if  not  the  major 
interest,  of  the  remainder  of  the  book,  yet  its  re- 
moval in  a  block  from  the  tale  would  not  alter  the 
conclusion  by  a  Hne.  Indeed,  its  effect  is  worse  than 
neutral;  it  is  a  hindrance  to  the  conclusion.  It 
forces  Miss  Austen  into  at  least  the  seeming  im- 
probabihty  of  allowing  a  man  to  elope  with  a  mar- 
ried woman  whom  he  does  not  love  to  the  certain 
ruin  of  his  not  uncheerful  prospects  with  the  woman 
whom  he  loves  sincerely.  What,  then,  is  the  motive 
for  the  episode?  Miss  Austen  designs  a  testimonial 
to  Fanny  on  the  grand  scale,  but  the  reader  has  two 
difficulties.  The  grandeur  of  the  scale  is  not  wholly 
clear,  at  least  to  a  man  who  does  not  share  Miss 
Austen's  womanly  sense  of  the  immeasurable  im- 
portance of  wicked  charmers;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  he  finds  it  hard  to  triumph  for  Fanny  in  the 


MANSFIELD  PARK  71 

very  circumstances  in  which  he  is  called  upon  to 
suffer  with  her. 

Crawford  conducts  his  suit  with  that  mixture  of 
acuteness  and  stupidity  which  marks  the  abler  and 
coarser  mind  in  its  deahngs  with  the  simpler  and 
finer  one.  In  the  strategy  of  his  assault,  I  am  more 
sensible  of  Miss  Austen's  cleverness  than  of  faith- 
fulness in  the  report  of  actuahty;  the  abatement  of 
prejudice  on  Fanny's  side  is  handled  with  dehcate 
and  authentic  insight,  and  Miss  Austen  comes  closer 
to  emotional  process  in  this  episode  than  in  any  other 
place  in  her  works  which  I  recall.  The  caution  of  the 
noveUst  arrests  the  process  in  its  nonage,  almost  in 
its  infancy;  it  never  reaches  a  stage  which  imperils 
either  Fanny's  heart  or  Edmund's  prospects. 

The  outcome  of  the  novel  is  rather  skilfully  ma- 
noeuvred. A  double  suspense  has  been  created  with 
regard  to  Edmund  Bertram's  courtship  of  Mary 
Crawford  and  Henry  Crawford's  pursuit  of  Fanny 
Price.  A  stroke  of  masterly  contrivance  enables  one 
event  to  furnish  a  solution  for  both  these  problems. 
Crawford  elopes  with  Maria  Rushworth — Maria  who 
has  been  kept  so  long  in  the  background  that  she  has 
almost  the  effect  of  being  resuscitated  for  the  com- 
mission of  this  enormity.  Crawford's  prospects  with 
Fanny  are  destroyed,  and  Edmund's  hopes  of  Mary 
are  equally  shipwrecked  by  the  worldhness  and 
levity  of  mind  revealed  in  Mary's  comments  on  the 
scandal. 


72  JANE  AUSTEN 

Miss  Austen,  however,  makes  a  mistake  in  the 
remoteness  and  chariness  of  her  handhng  of  the 
elopement,  which  is  not  only  the  mainspring  of  her 
two  denouments,  but  the  event  to  which  the  prepara- 
tions in  the  first  half  of  the  book  look  forward  with 
unswerving  constancy.  Miss  Austen  recoils  from  her 
own  crises.  She  resembles  those  persons  whom  Max 
Piccolomini  in  the  first  act  of  Wallenstein  described 
as  caUing  up  a  spectre  in  their  need,  and  shrinking 
away  from  it  the  instant  it  reveals  itseK.  She  says 
plainly:  ''Let  other  pens  dwell  on  grief  and  misery. 
I  quit  such  odious  subjects  as  soon  as  I  \.'jlii." 
To  which  the  answer  is  very  simple:  If  you  ob- 
ject to  dogs,  you  should  not  rear  puppies.  For 
dogs  at  a  pohte  distance,  in  a  judicious  half-hght, 
Miss  Austen  appears  to  have  a  real  partiahty.  At 
all  events,  at  the  very  moment  Maria  Rushworth 
is  eloping  with  Crawford,  JuUa  Bertram  is  eloping 
with  Mr.  Yates,  though  in  this  latter  case  nothing 
worse  than  a  clandestine  marriage  is  the  outcome  of 
the  adventure.  This  is  rather  too  much;  the  reader 
raises  a  protesting  eyebrow.  Maria,  yes;  some  sort  of 
black  lamb  was  doubtless  owed  to  Hecate.  But  why 
Juha?  Juha  was  entitled  to  the  shelter  of  insig- 
nificance. 

I  have  thus  far  slighted  an  element  in  the  tale 
which  protests  rather  loudly  against  omission.  In 
the  last  half  of  the  book  Fanny  spends  several  weeks 
at  her  parents'  house  in  Portsmouth.    The  reason  for 


MANSFIELD  PARK  73 

this  visit  is  peculiar.  Sir  Thomas  Bertram,  anxious 
to  reconcile  his  niece  to  the  desirable  match  with  the 
wealthy  Henry  Crawford,  resolves  that  she  shall 
learn  the  value  of  riches  by  a  brief  but  drastic  expe- 
rience of  the  hardships  of  poverty.  In  this  reasoning 
Sir  Thomas  is  hopeful  rather  than  lucid.  Fanny's 
alternative  is  not  Crawford  or  Portsmouth,  but 
Crawford  or  Mansfield.  Portsmouth  was  in  every- 
way qualified  to  teach  her  the  superiority  of  comfost 
to  poverty.  But  the  only  thing  that  it  can  be  in  the 
least  profitable  to  teach  her  is  the  superiority  of 
opul  .iCe  to  comfort,  and  her  mother's  house  is  the 
last  place  in  which  that  not  indisputable  thesis  could 
be  verified.  The  Portsmouth  chapters  have  been 
warmly  praised,  and  there  can  be  no  question  that  the 
exactness  of  their  particulars  is  impressive.  I  cannot, 
however,  rank  them  with  Miss  Austen's  very  best 
work,  because,  if  I  may  trust  my  instinct,  while  they 
have  exactness,  they  lack  pfiancy;  I  miss  the  ease  and 
suppleness  of  fife.  If  Miss  Austen  is  ever  fike  Gis- 
sing — and  I  should  think  twice  before  affirming  that 
she  was — she  is  like  him  in  this  Portsmouth  inter- 
lude. It  is  all  schooHng,  all  exhibit;  every  one  of  its 
clean-cut  particulars  is  tilted  at  the  precise  angle 
at  which  the  admonition  to  Fanny  is  unmistakable. 
This  accumulation  of  salutary  warnings  to  a  recal- 
citrant young  person  who  finally  rejects  them  all 
and  prospers  in  her  contumacy  impresses  the  reader 
as  uncalled  for. 


74  JANE  AUSTEN 

Mansfield  Park  is  a  combination  of  two  genera:  it 
is  a  biography,  the  biography  of  Fanny  Price,  and 
it  is  a  novel,  the  novel,  roughly  speaking,  of  the 
Bertrams  and  the  Crawfords.  Now  biography,  even 
in  the  most  artistic  hands,  is  congenitally  loose,  and 
Miss  Austen,  though  skilful,  is  not  punctiHously 
skilful.  Naturally  enough,  she  has  not  succeeded 
in  tucking  all  the  loose  ends  and  ravelhngs  of  the 
biography  into  the  compact  parcel  of  the  novel.  For 
example,  Mrs.  Norris's  services  to  the  plot  are 
virtually  over  after  the  first  few  chapters  in  which 
her  mendicant  benevolence — it  deserves  no  better 
phrase — brings  Fanny  Price  to  Mansfield.  After 
that  she  is  installed  as  a  permanent  incumbrance  in 
the  biography,  while  her  relation  to  the  novel  is 
merely  that  of  spectator  or  invader.  The  conclusion 
of  the  work  is  evidently  hurried.  Miss  Austen  has 
even  the  barbarity  to  withhold  from  the  reader  the 
sight  of  the  final  mutual  confession  of  Edmund  and 
Fanny. 

The  moral  or  morals  of  Mansfield  Park  are  doubt- 
less sound  enough,  but  I  do  not  feel  that  they  are 
powerfully  or  skilfully  enforced.  In  Chapter  48, 
almost  at  the  end  of  the  book,  there  is  a  formal  and 
solemn  exposition  of  the  errors  in  the  traimng  of  the 
two  Misses  Bertram.  The  passage  reads  Uke  an 
afterthought.  Until  I  came  to  these  paragraphs,  in 
which  the  elders  are  loaded  with  the  misconduct  of 
the  children,  I  own  that  I  had  failed  to  realize  that 


MANSFIELD  PARK  75 

the  rearing  of  the  Misses  Bertram  had  been  vicious, 
and  was  obUged  to  run  hastily  through  the  book  to 
discover  if  Miss  Austen  or  myself  had  failed  in 
vigilance.  My  dihgence  was  rewarded  with  one 
short  paragraph  in  which  a  hint  of  unwisdom  was 
unmistakably  lodged,  but  I  was  harsh  enough  to  feel 
that  the  need  of  research  to  obtain  this  information 
was  almost  as  sharp  a  criticism  on  the  noveUst  as  the 
failure  of  research  to  obtain  it  would  have  been. 
Authors,  Uke  other  parents,  sometimes  discover  too 
late  their  oversights  in  the  early  treatment  of  their 
children.  After  all,  it  is  hard  to  see  anything  in  the 
bringing-up  of  these  girls  which  would  account  for 
Maria's  desertion  of  her  husband  and  elopement 
with  a  gallant.  They  had  a  sensible  father,  a  harm- 
less, if  helpless,  mother,  and  an  injudiciously  flatter- 
ing aunt.  To  assert  that  vice  is  the  logical  outcome  of 
these  conditions  is  to  magnify  unduly  the  ascend- 
ency of  aunts. 

A  similar  warning  against  the  evil  fruits  of  im- 
wholesome  training  is  clearly  intended  in  the  case 
of  the  two  Crawfords.  But  a  relation  between 
training  and  its  consequences  cannot  be  made  effec- 
tive in  a  book  in  which  the  training  is  not  presented, 
or  is  presented  only  in  a  few  passing  words  of  hurried 
retrospect.  The  evils  of  parental  folly  may  be  again 
suggested  in  the  pictm-e  of  the  slatternly  Price  house- 
hold, but  if,  in  the  Crawford  matter  we  have  the 
conclusion  without  the  premises,  in  the  Price  affair 


76  JANE  AUSTEN 

we  have  the  premises  without  the  conclusion.  On 
the  whole,  we  cannot  but  feel  that  the  lessons  of 
Mansfield  Park,  though  doubtless  far  from  insmcere, 
were  somewhat  adventitious.  Miss  Austen  probably 
made  the  confection  to  please  the  sprightly,  and 
later  discovered  its  virtue  as  cough  medicine  in  order 
to  placate  the  discreet. 

Mansfield  Park  is  Fanny  Price's  book;  indeed  its 
faithfulness  to  Fanny  is  almost  canine.  It  is  a 
technical  flaw  perhaps  that  a  book  which  scarcely 
leaves  Fanny's  side  should  admit  a  brief  dialogue 
here  and  there  from  which  she  is  shut  out.  I  mind 
this  very  httle,  however,  because  I  think  that  no 
disapproval  which  arises  in  the  critical  re-surv^ey  of  a 
book  matters  much  except  as  the  sequel  of  a  dis- 
pleasure in  the  original  uncritical  reading.  In  point 
of  fact,  I  read  the  book  without  the  sHghtest  per- 
turbation from  this  error  in  consistency,  and  even 
now  I  am  not  sure  that  Miss  Austen  would  not  have 
done  well  to  part  from  Fanny  oftener  and  more 
freely.  The  love-affair  between  Edmund  and  MsLvy 
Crawford  is  seen  only  in  parcels  and  through  shts, 
because  it  is  seen  only  through  the  eyes  and  ears  of 
Fanny  Price. 

Fanny  herself  interests  and  attracts  us,  though  we 
yield  to  her  charm  with  a  shade  of  reluctance  and  a 
measure  of  reserve.  Her  position  as  the  poor  de- 
pendent in  the  great  house  is  as  advantageous  for 
heroineship  as  it  is  undesirable  in  reaUty.    She  is  by 


MANSFIELD  PARK  .^ 

no  means  the  pining  and  whining  orphan  of  nursery 
fiction;  she  is  fairly  well  treated  at  Mansfield,  though 
she  fives  at  her  uncle's  on  a  curiously  mixed  footing 
which  permits  her  the  luxury  of  a  horse  and  denies 
her  the  comfort  of  a  fire.  Her  virtue  is  a  httle 
formidable  even  in  a  heroine  from  whom  we  have 
learned  to  expect  no  moderation  or  self-restraint  in 
that  particular.  Fanny  does  not  allow  our  admira- 
tion the  breathing-space  which  the  commission  of  a 
single  fault  in  the  course  of  well-nigh  three  hundred 
pages  would  afford.  She  is  permitted  to  dislike  only 
those  persons  whom  it  is  permissible,  even  laudable, 
to  dislike.  For  her  offenses  in  this  kind  she  has  the 
excuse  of  youth  and  inexperience. 

This  very  excuse,  however,  becomes  the  source  of 
another  difficulty.  Fanny,  at  the  time  when  we  see 
most  of  her,  is  eighteen,  absolutely  ignorant  of  the 
world,  shrinking  and  docile  to  an  appeahng,  ahnost  a 
pathetic,  degree.  But  her  mind  is  about  twenty 
years  older  than  her  physique  or  her  character.  She 
is  set  down  in  the  Mansfield  Park  circle  as  Miss 
Austen's  delegate  and  mouthpiece.  She  observes 
with  Miss  Austen's  keenness,  and  condemns  with 
Miss  Austen's  severity.  We  are  disconcerted  by 
the  hardihood  with  which  this  fragile  and  trembhng 
girl  holds  out  in  her  own  mind  against  the  judgment 
of  the  very  persons  who,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  are 
responsible  for  the  formation  of  her  judgment. 
Literature  has  not  hesitated  to  combine  the  mildest 


78  JANE  AUSTEN 

and  sweetest  of  dispositions  with  perfect  clearness  of 
head  and  unbending  precision  of  verdict.  Hilda, 
in  the  Marble  Faun,  is  a  case  in  point,  but  Hilda,  a 
soUtary  American  girl  in  Rome,  is  predestined  by 
her  very  part  to  unhesitating  self-reliance.  But 
Fanny  has  never  left  her  dovecote  or  rookery.  If, 
in  the  Emersonian  phrase,  she  had  a  Delphi  in  her 
own  breast,  the  case  might  be  altered;  but  Fanny  is 
quite  innocent  of  any  such  appanage;  her  opinions 
are  formed  by  that  society  in  which  the  people  she 
condemns  are  judges  and  leaders. 

We  like  to  associate  keen  judgment  with  active 
force,  and  Miss  Austen  has  done  Fanny  an  ill  turn 
by  transporting  her  to  her  mother's  house  in  Ports- 
mouth, where  her  want  of  practical  effi.ciency  receives 
a  pecuhar — almost  a  sardonic — emptiasis.  In  the 
squalors  of  that  riotous  household  Fanny,  apart  from 
her  encouragement  of  Susan,  can  do  nothing  but 
lose  her  appetite  and  her  color,  retreat  into  herself, 
and  pine  for  Mansfield.  In  one  way,  all  this  is  right 
and  shrewd.  The  nursHng  of  the  aristocratic  leisure 
in  which  Fanny  has  been  dandled  would  no  doubt 
have  been  powerless  to  cope  with  the  grimy  situation 
at  the  Prices',  and  the  reader  who  dreams  of  an 
Esther  Summerson,  shepherding  a  meek  flock  of 
renovated  Jellybys,  must  not  be  peevish  at  the  snub 
to  his  romanticism.  There  is,  however,  sometliing 
narrow  and  mean  in  viewing  these  young  and  old 
ne'er-do-weels  solely  in  relation  to  their  success  or 


MANSFIELD  PARK  79 

failure  in  conciliating  the  taste  of  Mansfield,  and  I 
fear  that  Miss  Austen  can  hardly  be  acquitted  of 
complicity  in  the  httleness  and  egotism  of  this 
view.  What  is  Miss  Austen's  expedient  for  helping 
the  child  of  a  drunken  father  and  a  sUpshod  mother? 
Apparently  she  has  nothing  to  suggest  but  adoption 
into  a  rich  family.  When  told  that  the  French  poor 
had  no  bread,  Marie  Antoinette  is  said  to  have  re- 
plied: "Why,  then,  let  them  eat  cake."  I  have  no 
doubt  that  Miss  Austen  would  have  been  duly 
amused  at  the  artlessness  or  heartlessness  of  the 
young  queen's  reply. 

There  is  mother  trait  in  Fanny  which,  if  hardly 
to  be  classed  as  a  fault,  is,  in  my  own  case  at  least,  a 
bar  to  enjoyment.  About  half  the  time  Fanny  is  in  a 
state  of  fright,  or  at  least  of  flutter.  She  is  like 
Spenser's  almond-tree  on  Mount  SeUnus, 

Whose  tender  locks  do  tremble  every  one 

At  every  little  breath,  that  under  heaven  is  blown. 

Fm-ther,  this  fright  can  never  be  taken  for  granted 
and  pushed  aside;  it  must  always  be  recounted  with 
care,  with  detail,  with  affectionate  and  sohcitous 
assiduity.  We  all  think  that  Miss  Austen's  mind  was 
strong,  if  matched  with  Miss  Bm-ney's,  and  her- 
culean in  comparison  with  Mrs.  Radcliffe's;  but  not 
EveUna  in  the  novel  she  names,  not  Emily  in  the 
Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  is  more  fondled  and  cosseted 
on  the  score  of  nervousness  than  Fanny  under  the 


80  JANE  AUSTEN 

wing  of  the  robust  authoress  of  Mansfield  Park. 
The  trait  had  for  the  noveUsts  of  that  day  all  the 
holiness  of  a  convention,  a  convention  to  which 
the  martial  and  feudal  Scott  did  not  hesitate  to 
subscribe  in  the  portrayal  of  his  heroines.  But 
Scott  had  at  least  the  excuse  of  giving  his  heroines 
something  to  be  frightened  about,  and  the  emotion 
in  its  alternation  with  joy  and  love  had  for  the  heart 
the  romantic  charm  which  the  eye  felt  in  the  passage 
of  blush  and  pallor  across  the  maiden's  face.  Miss 
Austen,  as  a  reahst,  profits  less  by  these  excuses,  and 
her  constant  presentation  of  the  trait  as  an  elegance 
is  at  war  with  the  modern  reader's  indignant  refusal 
to  view  the  matter  in  that  Hght.  Famiy's  charm, 
moreover,  hes  largely  in  the  orderliness,  the  thrift 
and  neatness  of  her  compact  and  shapely  httle  mind, 
and  to  this  charm  flutter  is  adverse. 

Fanny  remains,  after  all  deductions,  a  kind  and 
good  girl  whose  fortunes  and  feelings  one  can  follow 
with  sincere,  if  somewhat  patronizing,  sympathy. 
Miss  Austen  reveals  some  of  her  most  deUcate 
psychology  in  the  strokes  of  nature  that  now  and  then 
rise  like  bubbles  to  the  smooth  surface  of  Faimy's 
impeccable  decorum.  Miss  Austen's  infinite  respect 
for  very  good  little  girls  cannot  always  bUnd  her 
shrewdness  to  the  fact  that  they  arc  hmnan  beings 
like  the  rest  of  us. 

I  now  pass  to  Fanny's  relatives  at  IMansfield  Park. 
They  are,  first  of  all,  an  imaginable  family,  differing 


MANSFIELD  PARK  81 

in  that  respect  from  the  Beimets,  who  are  only  a 
parcel  loosely  knotted  together  by  an  hereditary 
string.  Sir  Thomas  Bertram  does  not  rank  in 
interest  or  power  with  Miss  Austen's  prime  successes, 
but  in  one  point  he  is  a  capital  illustration  of  the 
delicacy  of  her  workmanship.  To  split  a  character 
in  two,  and  make  it  half  ridiculous,  haK  estimable  or 
lovable,  is  a  feat  to  which  the  dexterity  of  artists  has 
long  accustomed  us.  But  to  spHt  a  man's  dignity 
in  two,  and  make  one-half  ridiculous  and  the  other 
half  estimable  is  a  rarer  and  subtler,  though  not 
necessarily  a  more  valuable,  accompUshment.  Sir 
Thomas  is  a  worthy  and  a  stilted  man;  he  is  to  be 
exposed  and  vindicated  at  the  same  time,  and  the 
instrimient  of  his  exposure  and  vindication  alike  is  the 
fashion  of  his  speech.  That  speech  involves  a  great 
deal  of  the  ''mild  majesty  and  sober  pomp"  which 
Burke  praised  in  the  AngUcan  ritual.  It  is  pleasant 
to  see  the  cunning  with  which  Miss  Austen  protects 
Sir  Thomas  in  the  very  act  of  demolishing  his 
defenses.  Her  sense  of  the  mixture  in  things  is 
finely  evinced  in  the  art  which  allows  Sir  Thomas 
to  be  indignant  with  the  household  for  refusing  a 
fire  to  Fanny  at  the  precise  moment  when  he  is 
himself  angry  with  her  for  rejecting  a  desirable 
suitor. 

Miss  Austen's  hand  is  consummate  in  the  tiny 
portraiture  of  Lady  Bertram.  Even  the  initial 
strokes  are  final.    She  is  done  perfectly,  and  done 


82  JANE  AUSTEN 

all  at  once.  Continuance  adds  nothing  to  clearness, 
though  it  adds  much  to  pleasure.  In  Lady  Bertram, 
fortunately,  there  is  very  Httle  of  that  pyrotechnic 
quaUty  which  exaggeration  sometimes  confers  on 
Miss  Austen's  instant  and  vigorous  effects.  She  is 
one  of  those  woolly  characters  who  roll  themselves 
into  balls,  make  themselves  their  own  wrappage,  as 
it  were,  and  offer  the  minimum  of  exposure  to  the 
incursions  of  a  teasing  world.  If  her  selfishness  is 
unlimited,  equally  imlimited  is  her  good-nature. 
Such  beings,  if  happy,  may  be  real  alleviations  of 
the  inclemency  of  hfe  for  other  people.  A  cat,  the 
most  selfish  of  animals,  is  sometimes  the  most 
agreeable  of  companions  through  the  warmth  shed 
abroad  by  its  complete  success  in  ministering  to  its 
own  weffare.  We  half  despise,  half  envy,  the  dis- 
position for  which  comfort  is  pleasure.  In  her 
abandonment  of  responsibihty  in  her  mature  hfe. 
Lady  Bertram  is  not  unhke  two  married  women  of 
contemporary  fiction,  the  Mrs.  Gaylord  of  Mr. 
Howells's  Modern  Instance  and  the  Mrs.  Folyat  of 
Mr.  Cannan's  Round  the  Corner. 

Tom  Bertram  is  drawn  with  a  free  and  hght  but 
fortunate  touch.  Miss  Austen  hkes  him  pretty  well 
without  minding  him  very  much,  and  this  is  a  frame 
of  mind  that  is  favorable  rather  than  otherwise  to 
success  in  portraiture.  His  type  is  much  commoner 
in  the  Enghsh  novel  in  general  than  in  Miss  Austen's 
corner  of  the  field.    She  favors  either  the  brilhant 


MANSFIELD  PARK  83 

and  plausible  scapegrace,  the  Wickham,  Willoughby, 
or  Churchill  type,  or  the  mild  and  discreet  young 
men,  the  Ferrarses,  Bingleys,  and  Edmund  Bertrams. 
Tom  Bertram  is  of  the  type  prefigured  in  the  Tom 
Jones  of  Fielding  and  carried  forward  in  the  Tom 
Brown  of  Mr.  Hughes's  Rugby,  and  stands  about 
midway  between  his  two  namesakes  in  point  of  time 
and  rakishness.  A  single  sentence  will  show  the  dis- 
cretion with  which  Miss  Austen  portrays  a  character 
which  the  ordinary  novehst  is  tempted  to  fondle  or 
buffet.  ''Tom  hstened  with  some  shame  and  some 
sorrow;  but  escaping  as  quickly  as  possible,  could 
soon  with  cheerful  selfishness  reflect,  firstly,  that  he 
had  not  been  half  so  much  in  debt  as  some  of  his 
friends;  secondly,  that  his  father  had  made  a  most 
tiresome  piece  of  work  of  it;  and  thirdly,  that  the 
future  incumbent,  whoever  he  might  be,  would,  in 
all  probabihty,  die  very  soon."  One  of  those  sick- 
nesses which  flourish  in  the  third  volumes  of  novels, 
with  a  view  to  the  inducement  of  repentance  in 
the  hero  or  relenting  in  the  heroine,  waylays 
Tom  Bertram;  a  moral  convalescence  accompanies 
the  physical,  which  Miss  Austen,  whose  respect  for 
truth  is  highly  variable,  prolongs  beyond  the  date  of 
recovery.  It  may  be  added  that  Tom's  brusque  and 
hearty  unconcern  is  perfectly  evident  and  pleasantly 
evident  through  the  shapely  and  decorous  periods  in 
which  he  confesses  his  fiUation  to  Sir  Thomas  and  to 
Jane  Austen.    Scott  faced  and  mastered  a  similar 


84  JANE  AUSTEN 

difficulty  in  his  delineation  of  George  Robertson  in 
the  Heart  of  Mid-Lothian. 

There  is  a  curious  Hkeness  and  interesting  differ- 
ence between  Sir  Thomas  Bertram  and  his  younger 
son  Edmund.  Sir  Thomas  is  something  of  a  prig; 
Miss  Austen  knows  it,  likes  him  in  spite  of  it,  and 
succeeds  in  conveying  both  the  knowledge  and  the 
hking  to  the  reader.  Edmund  is  a  worse  prig  than 
Sir  Thomas,  but  Miss  Austen  draws  him  under  the 
impression  that  she  is  drawing  nothing  worse  than 
an  agreeable  and  exemplary  young  man,  and  the 
reader  feels  the  full  virus  of  the  priggishness.  Ed- 
mund is  once — just  once — allowed  to  do  wrong.  He 
consents  to  take  part  in  an  amateur  theatrical  per- 
formance to  be  given  in  his  father's  house  among 
brothers  and  sisters  and  two  or  three  intimate 
friends.  I  wish  to  give  Edmund  due  credit  for  this 
sohtary  misdemeanor,  but  I  feel  bound  to  point  out 
that  a  single  act,  however  iniquitous,  cannot  redeem 
a  long  career  of  hardened  and  imblushing  virtue  to 
which  even  the  excuse  of  thoughtlessness  is  wanting. 

Edmund  is  a  worshipper  of  decency,  and  rehgion 
which  is  a  part  of  decency  and  indeed  the  prime 
decency,  has  a  claim  to  his  imquahfied  respect.  He 
is  shocked  with  Mary  Crawford  for  letting  him  see 
that  her  real  objection  to  the  Crawford-Rush  worth 
elopement  is  the  damage  to  respectabiUty.  One 
suspects  that  this  is  the  real  trouble  with  Edmund 
himself,  but  to  avow  it  as  the  real  trouble  is  the 


MANSFIELD  PARK  85 

opposite  of  respectable.  There  are  situations  where 
respectabihty  makes  a  point  of  subordinating  its 
own  claims,  where  it  shocks  all  the  conventions  to 
give  primacy  to  the  conventional  shock.  We  hke 
Edmund's  kindness  to  Fanny,  and  we  do  not  feel 
that  Fanny's  virtues  are  rated  too  high  in  the  award 
of  Edmund  as  their  recompense.  As  a  husband  his 
kindness  will  be  unvarying,  and  he  will  treat  Fanny 
with  a  condescension  so  dehcate  that  both  he  and 
Fanny  will  mistake  it  for  respect. 

Of  the  two  Misses  Bertram  very  httle  is  made. 
JuUa,  the  younger  sister,  is  clear,  though  shght,  and 
the  sHghtness  is  hardly  a  fault  in  a  story  in  which 
Juha's  position  is  obviously  secondary.  But  Maria's 
case  is  very  different.  Maria  is  a  mainstay  of  the 
plot,  and  why  should  Maria  be  grudged  the  boon  of 
individuahzation  in  the  Austen  temple  where  even  the 
small  pillars  are  caryatids?  The  reason  is  quite  dark 
to  me.  Maria  is  cheap  ware  certainly,  but  Miss 
Austen's  interest  is  not  confined  to  porcelain. 

Mrs.  Norris,  Lady  Bertram's  sister,  is  the  out- 
standing figure  of  the  book.  Goldwin  Smith  says 
of  her:  ''Short  of  criminahty,  nothing  can  be  more 
odious;  nor  has  Jane  Austen  painted  anything  which 
we  should  say  was  more  worthy  of  hatred.  Mrs. 
Norris  is  harsh,  ill-natured,  mean,  and  artful.  Her 
mind  is  thoroughly  low.  .  .  .  Yet  what  character 
is  dearer  to  us  than  Mrs.  Norris?  What  would 
even  Mansfield  Park  be  without  her?    It  is  to  the 


86  JANE  AUSTEN 

bad  characters  in  novels  and  plays  that  we  are  in- 
debted after  all  for  the  excitement  and  the  fun." 
My  own  feelLrig  about  Mrs.  Norris  is  more  closely 
approximated  in  Henry  James's  comment  on  an- 
other famous  exemplar  of  acrimony  and  bullying, 
the  Mrs.  Proudie  of  Trollope's  Barsetshire  series. 
"She  is  exceedingly  true;  but  I  do  not  think  she  is 
quite  so  good  as  her  fame,  or  as  several  figures  from 
the  same  hand  that  have  not  won  so  much  honour. 
She  is  rather  too  violent,  too  vixenish,  too  sour." 
For  me  Mrs.  Norris  is  loud  herseh,  and  Miss  Austen's 
portrayal  of  her  is  simply  boisterous.  Nowhere  has 
Miss  Austen's  hand  been  more  brilUant  or  incisive; 
nowhere  has  it  been  more  unbridled  in  the  neglect 
of  shading  and  the  disdain  of  moderation. 

Mrs.  Norris,  like  Lady  Bertram,  belongs  to  what 
might  be  called  the  single-stroke  type  of  character. 
She  is  shrewish  and  she  is  stingy,  and  the  delineation 
consists  of  little  else  than  the  defiling  past  the 
reader's  mind  of  successive  illustrations  of  these 
major  traits.  Mrs.  Norris  has  been  cited  in  proof 
of  the  alleged  complexity  of  Miss  Austen's  delinea- 
tions, but  I  think  she  offers  no  gi'ound  for  serious 
discomfort  to  supporters  of  the  thesis  that  Miss 
Austen  is  anything  but  complex.  Besides  the 
parsimony  and  the  acrimony  we  are  invited  to  con- 
template her  flattery  of  the  young  Misses  Bertram, 
but  this  flattery,  of  which  we  have  only  one  marked 
exhibition  in  a  very  early  chapter,  never  dominates  or 


MANSFIELD  PARK  87 

permeates  the  drawing.  Indeed,  it  has  rather  the 
effect  of  being  provided  by  a  charitable  afterthought 
as  a  crutch  for  a  tardy  and  tottering  moral.  Perhaps 
I  am  a  httle  ill-natured  in  quarrelhng  with  the 
strokes  for  falhng  so  uniformly  into  two  groups  when 
almost  every  stroke  qua  stroke  is  masterly.  For- 
tunately for  herself,  Miss  Austen,  who  excels  in  the 
concrete  and  dehghts  in  the  abstract,  is  forced,  in  one 
side  of  the  presentation  of  Mrs.  Norris,  to  forego  her 
preference  and  exercise  her  faculty.  Love,  hate, 
wrath,  and  shame  may  promenade  in  the  abstract, 
but  frugahty  positively  refuses  to  renounce  its  adhe- 
sion to  the  concrete.  If  you  save,  you  must  save 
green  baize  or  shirt-buttons  or  their  equivalent. 

I  admire  the  portrait,  but  I  cannot  exult  in  its 
merits  in  the  unreserved  fashion  of  the  ordinarily 
temperate  Goldwin  Smith.  The  picture  tries  me 
almost  as  much  as  it  exhilarates.  I  feel  that  a 
criticism  which  Scott  in  his  review  apphed,  and,  on 
the  whole  misapphed,  to  the  Miss  Bates  and  Mr. 
Woodhouse  of  Emma  is  unassailable  in  relation  to 
Mrs.  Norris.  The  criticism  may  be  restated  thus: 
there  is  a  class  of  portraits  in  which  the  material 
repels  faster  than  the  treatment  can  attract.  In  the 
mimicry  of  a  bagpipe  it  is  conceivable  that  inaccu- 
racy or  inadequacy  might  be  a  blessing.  I  know  that 
the  uglinesses  of  art,  hke  the  distresses  of  love,  are 
sectors  in  a  circle  of  which  delight  is  the  circum- 
ference; yet  even  the  salubrity  of  art  acts  but  feebly 


88  JANE  AUSTEN 

on  the  asperity  of  Mrs.  Norris.  The  laceration  of 
Fanny  is  the  less  forgivable  because  the  service  to  the 
plot  is  simply  zero.  We  suffer  keenly  with  Cosette 
in  the  claws  of  the  Thenardiess  in  Hugo's  Les  Misera- 
bles,  but  we  suffer  stoutly,  because  this  barbarity  is  of 
the  very  grain  and  tissue  of  a  story  to  which  our 
hearts  are  joyously  and  unreservedly  conunitted. 
But,  after  the  first  chapter,  the  footing  of  Mrs.  Norris 
m  the  Mansfield  Park  story  exactly  coincides  with 
her  position  in  the  Mansfield  Park  household;  she  is  a 
tolerated  superfluity. 

Miss  Austen  has  kept  some  of  the  slyest  of  her 
pungencies  for  the  verbal  chastisement  of  Mrs.  Nor- 
ris, but  I  have  my  doubts  if  the  essence  of  the  char- 
acter be  truly  humorous.  Humor  is  masquerade, 
and  the  parsunony  and  acerbity  of  Mrs.  Norris 
hardly  seek  the  protection  of  a  mask.  At  times, 
indeed,  the  meanness  is  altogether  too  barefaced.  I 
quote  a  paragraph. 

While  Fanny's  mind  was  engaged  in  these  sort  of  hopes,  her 
uncle  was,  soon  after  tea,  called  out  of  the  room;  an  occurrence 
too  common  to  strike  her,  and  she  thought  nothing  of  it  till  the 
butler  re-appeared  ten  minutes  afterwards,  and  advancing  de- 
cidedly towards  herself,  said,  "Sir  Thomas  wishes  to  speak  with 
you,  ma'am,  in  his  own  room."  Then  it  occun-cd  to  her  what 
might  be  going  on;  a  suspicion  rushed  over  her  mind  which  drove 
the  colour  from  her  cheeks ;  but  instantly  rising,  she  was  preparing 
to  obey,  when  Mrs.  Norris  called  out,  "Stay,  stay,  Fanny!  what 
are  you  about?  where  are  you  going?  don't  be  in  such  a  hurry. 
Depend  upon  it,  it  is  not  you  who  are  wanted ;  depend  upon  it, 
it  is  me  (looking  at  the  butler)  but  you  are  so  very  eager  to  put 


MANSFIELD  PARK  89 

yourself  forward.  What  should  Sir  Thomas  want  you  for?  It 
is  me,  Baddeley,  you  mean;  I  am  coming  this  moment.  You 
mean  me,  Baddeley,  I  am  sure;  Sir  Thomas  wants  me,  not 
Miss  Price." 

A  master  of  a  house  often  wishes  to  see  a  servant, 
and  Fanny  is  a  relative;  Mrs.  Norris's  disbeUef  in 
the  possibiHty  of  her  being  sent  for  is  an  insult  to  the 
reader's  common  sense.  The  instance  is  extreme, 
and  most  of  Mrs.  Norris's  speeches  and  acts,  taken 
singly,  are  credible  enough.  It  is  their  reiteration 
and  concentration  that  provides  trials  for  the  reader's 
faith.  Miss  Austen  is  not  the  historian,  is  not  the 
judge;  she  is  the  prosecuting  attorney  whose  business 
is  not  the  probing  of  the  truth,  but  the  collection  of 
incriminative  evidence.  One  rebels  and  admires. 
Mrs.  Norris  pounds  at  Fanny,  and  Miss  Austen 
pounds  the  reader  with  Mrs.  Norris.  The  picture  is 
as  swashing  as  it  is  brilUant,  and  is  no  less  a  hardship 
than  a  joy. 

The  two  Crawfords,  brother  and  sister,  are  much 
ahke  both  as  persons  and  as  portraits.  The  relation 
of  Edmund  to  Mary  is  not  wholly  unhke  that  of 
Fanny  to  Henry.  In  each  case  the  serious  character 
feels  both  a  charm  and  a  danger  in  the  worldly  one. 
The  same  catastrophe,  the  elopement,  puts  an  end  to 
both  uncertainties.  Edmund's  support  of  Crawford's 
suit  is  curiously  parallel  to  Mary's  countenance 
of  Henry's.  Neither  brother  nor  sister  occupies 
a  front  place  in  the  Austen  gallery.    Each  is  more 


90  JANE  AUSTEN 

than  a  failure,  but  each  is  less  than  a  success,  and  in 
both  cases  the  haK-failure  seems  assignable  to  the 
same  cause,  to  lacunas  in  the  portrayal,  the  absence 
of  connective  tissue. 

The  problem  of  the  young  woman  of  the  world 
whose  heart  is  drawn  to  a  young  clergyman  is  one  of 
vigorous  appeal.  If  one  had  to  pick  out  a  more 
penetrating  problem,  it  would  be  that  of  the  young 
clergyman  whose  heart  is  drawn  to  a  woman  of 
fashion.  When  these  two  first-rate  situations  face 
each  other,  the  material  becomes  almost  inestimable. 
In  one  respect  the  planning  of  Mary  Crawford's 
character  is  worthy  of  this  splendid  opportunity. 
She  is  not  a  bad  woman,  not  even  a  wholly  frivolous 
woman.  The  difference  between  her  and  the  wholly 
baleful  influence  is  the  difference  between  Calypso 
and  Circe.  On  one  occasion  in  the  theatrical  squab- 
ble, the  author  has  made  her  truly  kind  to  Fanny, 
not  to  mention  the  many  occasions  on  which  she  is 
poUtely  or  poUticly  kind.  She  loves  the  world;  she 
loves  Edmund  Bertram;  her  preference  is  hidden 
from  herself.  She  is  old  enough  to  know  the  value  of 
circumspection,  and  young  enough  to  rejoice  at 
times  in  throwing  it  off.  She  has  principle  enough  to 
protest,  though  far  from  strongly,  against  her 
brother's  plan  to  divert  himself  with  Fanny. 

Nevertheless,  I  must  own  to  a  feeling  that  I  can- 
not get  at  Mary  Crawford,  and  I  have  sometimes  the 
temerity  to  think  that  Miss  Austen  shares  my  em- 


MANSFIELD  PARK  91 

barrassment.  There  are  two  marked  diflSculties;  we 
are  obliged  to  see  her  brokenly  through  Fanny- 
Price's  interrupted  vision,  and  obUquely  through 
Fanny  Price's  biased  eyes.  Her  love  for  Edmund, 
its  feature,  its  profile,  is  absolutely  withheld  from  us, 
and  even  for  the  other  side  of  her  character  we  are 
obhged  to  depend  on  scattered  hints  and  surface 
indications.  Again,  while  the  contiguity  of  the  two 
elements  in  her  personality  has  been  finely  and 
natiu-ally  conceived,  I  do  not  feel  that  their  amal- 
gamation has  been  brought  to  pass.  The  synthetic 
view  by  which  dramatic  elements  are  unified  into  a 
human  being  is  not  perceivable  in  the  treatment  of 
Mary  Crawford.  Miss  Austen  disUkes  her,  and  while 
intent  on  controUing  the  dislike,  is  betrayed  here  and 
there  into  a  flash  of  mahce.  One  such  flash  is  her 
reference  to  Tom  Bertram's  illness:  ''I  never  bribed 
a  physician  in  my  life."  This  is  worse  than  cruel  on 
Miss  Austen's  part;  it  is  tactless.  It  does  not  take 
Miss  Crawford  out  of  nature,  but  it  vulgarizes  a 
worldliness  whose  interest  lay  largely  in  its  dehcacy. 
In  Henry  Crawford  the  discerning  endeavor  to 
balance  good  and  evil  is  equally  noticeable,  but  the 
success  is  even  more  imperfect.  Henry  Crawford 
leaves  ruin  behind  him,  but  even  in  power  he  lacks 
significance.  He  talks  very  freely,  but  his  utterance 
is  inexpressive.  Don  Juans  as  a  class  are  tenuous,  the 
sort  of  persons  whom  ghosts  can  discipline  and  stat- 
utes kill,  and  Crawford  is  an  attenuated  Don  Juan. 


92  JANE  AUSTEN 

At  the  close  of  the  book  he  runs  off  with  a  woman 
whom  he  despises  to  the  certain  loss  of  the  woman 
whom  he  really  loves.  We  touch  here  on  the  power- 
ful suggestion  that  the  penalty  of  pursuing  caprice 
at  the  expense  of  others'  comfort  and  one's  own  con- 
science is  the  final  sacrifice  to  this  tinsel  god  of  one's 
own  profoundest  and  most  passionate  desires.  Wil- 
fulness thwarts  our  will.  Striking  as  this  reflection 
is,  in  Mansfield  Park  it  is  hardly  more  than  a  re- 
flection, or  indeed  an  imphcation.  It  remains  on  the 
verge  of  the  story  where  its  mfiuence  on  the  book  is 
naturally  slight.  Crawford  is  the  leisurely,  the  placid, 
the  indolently  supple  ladykiller,  the  huntsman  to 
whom  the  chase  is  more  than  the  game,  and  his  ele- 
gance in  the  saddle  more  than  the  chase.  With 
Faimy  his  heart  is  touched,  and  alacrity  is  more  ap- 
parent. I  do  not  know  whether  Miss  Austen  is 
blind  to  the  real  insolence  of  the  means  he  adopts 
in  his  pursuit  of  Fanny — means  which  reek  with 
latent  insult  and  which  would  settle  his  fate  once  for 
all  with  any  spirited  woman.  I  incline  to  think  that 
Miss  Austen  views  his  wooing  as  refined  and  diplo- 
matic. I  think  she  erred  in  denying  him  personal 
beauty;  the  fear  of  the  obvious  has  impau"ed,  or  at 
least  imperilled,  the  naturalness  of  the  portrait.  A 
man  whose  mind  and  manners  are  only  moderately 
winning  could  not  safely  dispense  with  the  reenforce- 
ment  of  good  looks. 

The  other  characters  are  of  small  account.     A 


MANSFIELD  PARK  93 

stroke  or  two  makes  Dr.  Grant  absolutely  clear — 
clearer  than  his  wife  to  whom  many  more  strokes 
are  less  profitably  devoted.  The  contents  of  Mr. 
Rushworth's  mind  are  so  meagre  as  hardly  to  fmiiish 
even  the  needful  equipment  for  an  adequate  im- 
becile. At  a  distance  he  excites  pity.  WiUiam 
Price,  the  midshipman,  is  agreeable  and  unob- 
trusive; Susan  is  cUnched  in  a  few  deft  touches;  and 
the  other  Prices,  of  whom  Miss  Austen  is  almost 
inhimianly  contemptuous,  are  distinct  enough  in 
their  clamor  and  squalor. 

I  may  note,  finally,  that  in  Mansfield  Park  there 
is  a  partial  disparity  between  the  form — at  least, 
the  apparent  form — of  the  book,  and  its  contents.  It 
purports  or  claims  to  be  made  after  an  ancient  and 
approved  recipe  by  which  the  tediums  of  genera- 
tions have  been  salved.  There  is  the  nestling  of 
poverty  who  becomes  the  nursUng  of  wealth,  the 
penniless  girl  brought  up  among  the  chilly  bounties 
of  rich  relations.  There  is  the  handsome  young 
heir  (or  cadet)  by  whom  an  instant  and  constant 
attachment  is  inspired.  There  is  the  wicked  knight 
or  amorous  conjuror  who  uses  all  his  arts  to  draw 
the  young  girl  within  the  fated  circle  of  his  maUgn 
influence.  There  is,  finally,  the  ogress  (Mrs.  Norris) 
who  dogs  the  heroine's  steps.  This  is  the  kind  of 
tale  to  be  read  stretched  out  lazily  upon  the  hearth- 
rug or  doubled  up  in  the  cosiness  of  the  sofa-corner 
(to  read  it  in  a  chair  is  unpermissible) ,  and  the  effect 


94  JANE  AUSTEN 

of  lamplighted  and  carpeted  interiors  in  Mansfield 
Park  fits  in  with  these  agreeable  conditions.  This  is 
not  quite  the  book  that  Miss  Austen  wrote,  it  is  the 
book  she  feigned  to  write.  The  feint  is  not  unskilful, 
and  lovers  of  this  particular  brand  of  hterary  sweet- 
meat are  not  the  persons  whom  deceivers  find  most 
troublesome.  It  is  this  cousinship  with  a  more 
popular  and  insinuating  type  of  fiction  that  helps 
to  account  for  the  appearance  of  its  name  seven 
times  on  the  sHps  of  paper  with  which,  according 
to  Goldwin  Smith,  a  party  of  men  of  letters  balloted 
for  the  novel  affording  the  most  pleasure. 

I  have  very  httle  faith  in  this  "tradition,"  as 
Goldwin  Smith  himself  circumspectly  calls  it,  and  I 
doubt  if  Mansfield  Park  has  largely  profited  by  the 
attempt  to  couch  a  serious  study  of  life  in  the  frame 
of  a  fairy  tale.  The  frame  is  too  sHght,  and  its 
fragihty  must  not  be  overstrained.  The  width  of 
character  congenial  to  Miss  Austen  is  shut  out,  and 
Lady  Bertram  and  Mrs.  Norris  are  the  only  char- 
acters in  which  the  noveHst  rises  to  her  full  height. 
The  elopement  of  Henry  Crawford  and  Maria  Rush- 
worth  in  a  story  of  this  kind  is  like  the  firing  of  a 
pistol  shot  at  an  afternoon  tea.  The  story,  naturally 
enough,  flees  to  the  nearest  hiding-place,  crouches 
down,  and  puts  its  fingers  in  its  ears.  The  fairy 
tale  is  a  httle  too  elemental  or  exotic  for  Miss  Austen's 
free  and  robust  hand.  We  feel  that  Edmund  is 
overstarched,    that   Fanny   is   oversweetened,   and 


MANSFIELD  PARK  95 

that  the  two  Crawfords  are  unfortunate  in  their 
resemblance  to  unstable  chemical  compoimds.  The 
book  has  much  that  is  valuable  and  attractive,  but 
in  soundness  of  plan,  in  fundamental  health,  it  im- 
presses me  as  notably  inferior  both  to  Emma  and  to 
Pride  and  Prejudice. 


CHAPTER  V 
EMMA 

The  claim  of  Emma  to  the  second  place  among 
Miss  Austen's  novels  seems  to  me  as  incontestable 
as  its  failure  to  compete  with  Pride  and  Prejudice 
for  the  honor  of  the  first.  Emma,  the  novel,  has  a 
quaUty  of  its  own,  a  good-natured,  placid,  sUghtly, 
dispersed  and  unoccupied  quaUty,  which  is  pleasantly 
reflected  in  the  character  of  its  heroine.  The  atmos- 
phere is  sunny;  the  people  are  in  the  main  healthy, 
prosperous,  and  cheerful;  nobody,  with  the  doubtful 
exception  of  the  two  Knightleys,  has  much  to  do; 
and  the  story  resigns  itself  with  the  other  inhabitants 
of  Highbury  to  that  poverty  of  incident  and  defect 
of  bustle  which  is  the  price  paid  by  small  villagers 
for  security  and  comfort. 

The  main  bid  for  heart-throbs  Hes  in  a  secret  en- 
gagement, and  though  Miss  Austen  does  her  best 
to  uphold  its  solemnity  by  speaking  of  it  in  the  tone 
appropriate  to  a  defalcation  or  a  burglary,  the  reader 
dechnes  to  excite  himself.  Indeed,  the  opportunity 
to  excite  himself  is  not  offered  until  tlu-ee-fourths 
of  the  narrative  is  complete,  for  this  is  the  point  at 
which  he  is  apprised  of  the  occurrence.  Meanwhile, 
he  has  contented  himself  with  such  amusement  as 

96 


EMMA  97 

he  could  pick  up  by  the  way.  Of  what  does  this 
amusement  consist?  There  is  a  semblance  of  a 
love-affair  between  Frank  Churchill  and  Emma 
Woodhouse,  but  as  the  affair  is  pure  imagination  on 
the  woman's  part  and  pure  simulation  on  the  man's, 
and  as  both  parties  are  warmly  agreed  on  the  ex- 
pediency of  its  prompt  consignment  to  the  dustheap, 
its  contribution  to  the  life  of  the  story  is  not  great. 

What  more  does  the  narrative  offer?  There  is  a 
young  girl  who  is  induced  by  a  benevolent  but 
shortsighted  patroness  to  transfer  her  affections  from 
a  young  farmer,  who  is  her  social  equal  and  mental 
superior,  to  a  young  clergyman  who  airs  his  want  of 
sense  m  a  poUter  circle.  The  young  clergyman 
proving  ungrateful,  nourishing  indeed  a  most  un- 
seasonable passion  for  the  patroness,  the  heart  of 
the  young  girl  is  transferred,  this  time  by  its  own 
voUtion,  to  a  county  landowner.  The  landowner 
remaining  obdurately  imconscious,  the  heart,  which 
has  been  passed  around  like  a  photograph  in  a  draw- 
ing-room, is  returned  with  the  strictest  probity  to 
its  original  possessor,  the  young  farmer.  This  kind 
of  chain-work  will  obviously  awaken  no  great  sus- 
pense, especially  when  we  allow  for  the  fact  that  the 
young  girl  is  subsidiary  and  insignificant.  The 
young  clergyman,  having  been  refused  by  the  pa- 
troness, proceeds  with  vindictive  celerity  to  court 
and  marry  another  woman.  This  second  woman's 
contribution  to  the  plot  is  minute;  it  consists  in 


98  JANE  AUSTEN 

securing  a  place  as  governess  for  Jane  Fairfax  (the 
woman  who  is  secretly  engaged),  which  the  said 
Jane,  accepting  one  evening  in  an  access  of  despair, 
cancels  a  few  days  later  in  a  reflux  of  happiness. 
The  clergyman's  wife,  irrelevant  to  the  plot,  is 
nevertheless  invaluable  to  Jane  Austen.  The  mo- 
ment of  her  entrance  is  critical  for  the  story.  The 
first  interest,  that  of  the  young  clergyman's  love- 
affairs,  is  definitively  ended;  the  secret  engagement 
which  is  to  vivify  the  close  is  undiscemed  as  yet  by 
any  except  the  Dupins  among  the  readers;  something 
is  clearly  needed  to  keep  the  pubHc  from  dozing. 
Now  this  clergyman's  wife  is  a  woman  with  rings  on 
her  fingers  and  bells  on  her  toes  (I  speak  partly  in 
metaphor),  and  with  the  jingle  of  these  trinkets  she  is 
deputed  to  amuse  the  reader  in  the  slumber  or  sus- 
pension of  the  other  interests.  The  expedient  is  not 
artful;  but  in  the  act  of  drowning  one  clutches  at 
Mrs.  Eltons  as  at  other  straws. 

Meanwhile,  a  love-affair  of  a  calm,  slow,  and  un- 
eventful type,  disguising  itself  as  a  friendship  when 
it  is  not  masquerading  as  a  feud,  has  estabhshed 
itself  between  the  heroine  and  the  landowner,  and 
mutual  avowals  close  the  book.  The  novel  as  a 
whole  is  a  curious  medley  in  which  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  what  passes  for  heart  interest,  handled  with 
scant  suspense  and  broken  continuity.  The  reader 
is  often  constrained  to  wonder  where  the  story  is. 
He  thinks  of  a  picnic  in  which  desultory  groups  of 


EMMA  99 

persons  dispose  themselves  at  random,  or  pursue 
nominal  objects  with  devious  strolls  and  pointless 
rearrangements.  The  simile  is  instructive  and  yet 
unfair,  because  in  work  so  clean-cut  as  Miss  Austen's, 
observation  becomes  an  end  in  itseK,  and  the  addi- 
tion of  fact  to  fact  is  significant  irrespective  of  its 
bearing  on  an  issue. ,  The  story  does  not  loaf  even 
when  it  hngers;  loafing  imphes  languor  of  movement 
as  well  as  uncertainty  of  route,  and  Miss  Austen's 
gait  is  never  shuffling;  even  her  route  is  rather  various 
and  devious  than  unsure. 

It  may  be  thought  that  Emma's  blunders  should 
supply  a  unifying  principle  for  the  book.  But 
Enoma's  blunders  are  an  odd  lot;  they  are  of  all 
sorts  and  all  sizes;  they  are  sometimes  rather  unde- 
fined, and  the  degree  of  then-  harmfuhiess  is  some- 
times difficult  to  measure.  They  have  nothing  Uke 
the  symmetry  and  ordered  neatness  (nor,  let  us 
hasten  to  add,  anything  like  the  arrant  artifice) 
of  the  blunders  of  Lehe  in  Mohere's  Etourdi  or  of 
Sir  Martin  Mar-all  in  Dryden's  imitation  of  that 
comedy.  Emma's  capital  error  is  her  first — the 
fostering  of  Harriet's  passion  for  Mr.  Elton.  By 
that  step,  if  I  may  paraphrase  the  language  of  Ma- 
caulay  on  Marlborough's  treachery,  she  put  herself 
under  the  disadvantage  which  attends  every  great 
artist  from  the  moment  he  has  achieved  a  master- 
piece; and,  unhke  Marlborough,  Emma  fails  to  cope 
successfully  with  this  disadvantage.     Her  second 


100  JANE  AUSTEN 

blunder  in  the  same  kind  is  far  less  flagrant,  and 
the  recuperative  powers  of  Harriet's  heart  do  not 
strengthen  our  sense  of  the  wickedness  of  Emma. 
With  one  exception,  her  other  follies  amount  to  Uttle. 
Her  flirtation  with  Frank  Churchill  is  hardly  more 
than  an  excusable  imprudence,  and  her  levities  at 
Box  Hill  are  a  relatively  innocent  part  of  a  complex 
general  situation  of  which  a  rupture  of  the  engage- 
ment between  Frank  Churchill  and  Jane  Fairfax  is 
the  momentary  outcome.  On  the  other  hand,  her 
really  unpardonable  conduct  in  the  Dixon  matter  is 
productive  of  no  evil  beyond  a  passing  embarrass- 
ment. It  is  quite  true  that  Emma's  experience  is  no 
more  unequal  or  unsorted  than  the  normal  course  of 
life,  but  life  is  not  a  novel  and  the  entertainment  of 
spectators  is  not  the  object  of  its  march. 

It  is  regrettable  that  the  mistake  of  Elinor  Dash- 
wood  and  Mrs.  Jennings  as  to  the  identity  of  the 
person  of  whom  they  talk  is  repeated  with  equal  ex- 
travagance and  rather  less  excuse  in  the  conversa- 
tion of  Harriet  and  Emma  in  the  fortieth  chapter. 

Emma  Woodhouse  is  a  finely  drawn  character. 
She  is  not  lovable,  she  is  not  winning;  but  she  is 
vastly  likable.  She  is  one  of  those  persons  whose 
vicinity  is  wholesome;  her  presence  is  more  excit- 
ing than  her  conversation,  which  seems  merely 
episodic  to  her  presence.  She  does  nothing  but 
blunder,  and  the  effect  of  this  succession  of  blunders 
is  the  instilment  of  an  unshakable  trust.    The  truth 


EMMA  101 

is  that  Emma's  consciousness  at  this  stage  of  her 
Hfe  is  the  antipodes  of  her  temperament;  what  she 
thinks  and  feels  beUes  what  she  is.  Her  thinking 
and  feeHng  is  for  the  most  part  frivolous  and  silly; 
but  the  essential  things  in  her  are  bottom  and  poise. 
She  has  that  firm-based  British  nature,  that  rounded 
— I  am  almost  moved  to  say  that  mounded — temper- 
ament which  shows  itseK  in  such  diverse  forms  and 
to  such  varied  purpose  in  Scott's  Jeanie  Deans,  in 
Hardy's  Tess  Durbeyfield,  and  in  George  EHot's 
Mary  Garth. 

She  is  handsome,  clever,  and  rich,  and  she  suffers 
from  the  malaise  of  having  nothing  to  do.  She  has 
too  many  servants  to  permit  her  to  work,  and  too 
few  dependents  to  exercise  her  charity.  The  care 
of  an  invahd  father  to  whom  she  is  devoted  furnishes 
her  with  just  that  degree  of  occupation  which  makes 
the  absence  of  voluntary  tasks  forgivable.  She  has  no 
religion  to  speak  of,  no  zeal  in  the  pursuit  of  study, 
no  serious  intellectual  interest.  The  social  activity 
in  the  populous  village  of  Highbury  is  meagre  and 
casual.  She  has  indefinite  leisure  and  an  untilled 
mind.  A  mind  capable  of  seriousness,  but  not  capa- 
ble of  finding  its  own  occasions  for  seriousness,  has 
drifted  into  levity  through  defect  of  schooling  and 
excess  of  freedom.  Only  a  fraction  of  her  nature  is  in 
play;  she  is  the  owner  of  a  chateau  who  fives  in  a 
marquee. 

Emma's  love  for  Mr.  Knightley  is  the  natural  and 


102  JANE  AUSTEN 

salutary  demand  of  her  tentative  nature  for  cer- 
tainty and  authority.  She  has  no  expHcit  principles; 
it  has  never  occurred  to  her  that  a  person  of  such  ad- 
mirable dispositions  as  herself  could  stand  in  need  of 
principles.  One  doesn't  muzzle  a  lamb.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  most  admirable  of  dispositions,  if  unse- 
cured by  principles,  are  in  themselves  no  security 
against  acts  the  most  contrary  to  their  own  tenden- 
cies. The  good-natured  and  generous  Emma  con- 
fides to  Frank  Churchill  her  meddlesome  and  ill- 
bred  conjectures  on  the  relations  of  Jane  Fairfax  to 
Mr.  Dixon.  Conduct  of  this  kind  is  a  trial — not  to 
say  an  ordeal — for  the  sympathetic  reader,  but  our 
kindness  for  Emma  has  something  of  the  stabiHty 
and  ampUtude  of  Emma  herseK.  I  use  ampUtude 
here  in  a  moral  sense,  though  there  is  a  quahty, 
including  both  mind  and  person,  which  tempts  me  to 
use,  and  yet  will  not  quite  peraiit  me  to  use,  the  ad- 
jective buxom. 

Mr.  Woodhouse  is  drawn  with  hardly  less  abihty, 
though  with  less  subtlety,  than  his  daughter.  The 
sohcitudes  of  Mr.  Woodhouse  are  undoubtedly  cari- 
catured— Miss  Austen  loves  truth,  but  not  truth  at 
a  vast  expense  of  pungency — yet  that  is  not  tanta- 
mount to  saying  that  Mr.  Woodhouse  himself  is  a 
caricature.  There  is  much  in  him  besides  the  self- 
coddler.  He  is  grateful  and  affectionate  and  hos- 
pitable and  courteous,  and  his  anxieties  are  so  wi- 
dened by  his  altruism  as  to  include  the  whole  body  of 


EMMA  103 

his  deplorably  reckless  acquaintance.  Mr.  Wood- 
house  is  the  mildest  of  men,  yet  being  a  member  of 
the  Austen  world,  he  is  precise  in  his  mildness.  If 
in  his  softness  and  tremors  he  is  jelly,  he  is  jelly  in  a 
mold.  The  association  of  ceremony  with  flutter  was 
an  original  thought,  whether  the  originahty  was 
nature's  or  Jane  Austen's.  Nothing  in  Jane's  work 
is  more  endearing  than  the  deference  that  is  paid 
on  all  hands  to  a  type  that  is  normally  unlucky  both 
in  its  companions  and  its  painters.  Mr.  Woodhouse 
is  an  egotist  and  fool,  an  exacting  and  trying  fool, 
yet  he  is  the  object  of  unrelaxing  tenderness  and 
esteem  from  people  who,  hke  the  Knightleys,  are 
possessed  of  every  excuse  for  impatience  which  health 
of  unfeeling  robustness  and  the  curtest  of  tempers  can 
bestow. 

The  Westons  will  hardly  detain  us.  Mr.  Weston, 
while  personally  a  Httle  tedious,  is  highly  interesting 
as  a  bit  of  craftsmanship.  He  is  the  best  of  men,  with 
all  the  favorable  indications  and  all  the  dubious  im- 
phcations  of  that  amiably  insidious  phrase.  To  be 
specific,  he  is  just,  kind,  cheerful,  friendly,  talkative, 
a  httle  lavish  in  his  talk,  a  little  indiscriminate  in 
his  cheer  and  comity.  A  comic  dramatist  would 
have  left  the  virtues  imclouded,  or  would  have  given 
the  foibles  a  free  hand.  But  Miss  Austen  makes  a 
mere  abatement,  a  qualification,  both  a  source  of 
difference  and  guarantee  of  reality.  The  picture 
is  instinct  with  that  rare  equity  which  in  Miss  Austen 


104  JANE  AUSTEN 

was  the  incongrous  associate  of  so  reckless  and  dash- 
ing a  onesidedness.  Her  temper  in  the  portrayal 
is  as  perfect  as  her  art;  it  is  almost  as  h^ad  to^e- 
spise  men  a  httle  with  Miss  Austen  as  to  del^se  thejiL 
tenderly  with  Anatole  France. 

Mrs.  Weston,  in  whom  all  the  virtues  are  neatly 
packed  and  plainly  labelled,  has  only  one  drawback; 
she  has  always  the  air  of  a  person  who  comes  to  us 
superlatively  recommended.  We  feel  that  she  is 
earning  our  indorsement;  at  the  end  of  her  stay  we 
shall  be  powerless  to  refuse  her  a  ''character."  We 
respect  her  for  bearing  a  child;  that  is  an  act  of  re- 
freshing sohdity  in  a  world  in  which  the  people  are 
mostly  idle  observers  of  each  other's  idleness. 

Mr.  Knightley,  Enoma's  dictatorial  lover,  is  the 
kind  of  material  which  anybody  who  can  draw  char- 
acter at  all  can  draw  admirably.  Incisiveness  re- 
quires less  art,  or  will  make  the  same  allowance  of 
art  go  farther,  than  almost  any  other  trait.  Being 
the  least  expensive  of  material,  it  is  also  the  most  lu- 
crative; the  returns  on  the  investment  are  very  large 
in  the  Hotspur  of  Shakespeare,  the  Anthony  Ab- 
solute of  Sheridan,  the  Jaggers  of  Dickens,  and  the 
Lady  Rockminster  of  Thackeray.  Mr.  Knightley 
is  a  middle-aged  English  landowner  of  redoubtable 
probity,  great  executive  force,  adamantine  opinions, 
and  a  candor  by  which  others  profit  and  suffer.  His 
speech  has  the  velocity,  regularity,  and  energy  of  a 
force-pump,  yet  manages  to  keep  its  himian  property 


EMMA  105 

for  all  that.  He  is  almost  cruel  in  his  rebuke  of 
cruelty;  one  feels  that  he  is  the  sort  of  master  who 
^'^•lilldjlMnn  a  servant  for  a  lapse  into  profanity. 
i  cannot  but  feel  that  this  world  must  be  far  better 
and  far  better-natured  than  it  now  is  before  a  mere 
flick  of  satire  at  another  person's  obvious  and  ob- 
trusive folly  can  deserve  the  avalanche  of  reproba- 
tion which  Emma  receives  for  her  treatment  of  Miss 
Bates.  Nothing  is  more  curious,  nothing  is  more  rev- 
elatory of  Miss  Austen's  seK-inclosed  and  conse- 
quential world,  than  the  subjects  which  occupy  the 
mind  of  this  thoughtful,  powerful,  and  unimaginative 
man  of  affairs.  They  include  snubs  to  old  spinsters 
by  thoughtless  young  women,  but  they  mainly  deal 
with  love.  His  interest  in  the  marriage  of  a  young 
farmer  with  a  village  girl  engrosses  him  to  the  point 
of  quarrelling  with  the  woman  he  loves  in  its  behalf. 
It  is  the  oddest  of  worlds  in  which  a  novehst,  assum- 
ing the  part  of  Omphale,  can  find  no  apter  instru- 
ment for  Hercules  than  the  distaff. 

Mr.  John  Knightley  is  the  brother  of  the  elder 
Knightley  and  the  husband  of  Enama's  sister.  I 
spoke  just  now  of  Miss  Austen's  dehcate  fairness  to 
the  demonstrative  and  genial  Mr.  Weston.  Mr. 
John  Knightley  is  a  fairly  good  illustration  of  the 
opposite  habit — the  habit  of  making  a  single  trait 
the  sum  and  substance  of  the  portrayal  to  the  ex- 
clusion or  unfair  subordination  of  more  vital  ele- 
ments in  the  character.    Mr.  John  Knightley  is  in 


106  JANE  AUSTEN 

most  ways  a  very  good  man,  but  Miss  Austen  has 
no  time  to  waste  on  such  kickshaws  as  virtues.  Mr. 
John  Knightley  is  the  possessor  of  an  invaluable 
little  temper  of  which  a  thrifty  noveUst  must  make 
the  most.  The  point  in  visiting  a  geyser  is  always  to 
arrive  at  or  near  the  moment  of  eruption.  That  is 
exactly  the  point  in  the  portrayal  of  Mr.  John 
Knightley.  His  ill-temper  is  crisp  enough,  though 
in  view  of  the  smallness  of  its  occasions  and  the  en- 
tire innocence  in  many  cases  of  the  human  receptacle 
into  which  its  acerbities  are  poured,  it  might  pass  for 
mere  peevishness,  but  for  its  assumption  of  logical 
form  and  its  origin  in  a  masculine  chest.  It  is  not 
merely  in  hterature  that  the  recourse  to  the  big 
bow-wow  strain  is  of  service  to  the  arrogant 
male. 

Mr.  Frank  Churchill  is  Mr.  Weston's  handsome 
and  aristocratic  son.  He  enters  the  story  at  a  very 
advanced  point — to  be  precise  at  the  one  hundred 
and  fifty-first  page  in  an  edition  of  three  hundred 
and  ninety-five  pages;  but  in  the  interest  which  pre- 
ludes and  the  sensation  which  accompanies  this  be- 
lated entrance  he  is  comparable  only  to  Chad  in  Mr. 
James's  Ambassadors.  Like  Chad  again,  he  is  a 
little  disappointing  and  not  perfectly  elucidated.  To 
adopt  the  language  of  EUzabethan  stage  directions, 
after  the  opening  flourish  there  are  scattered  alarms 
and  excursions,  which  are  clearly  mere  episodes  and 
offshoots  of  some  larger  conflict  off-stage,  the  pur- 


EM]VIA  107 

port  and  progress  of  which  are  inscrutable  from  our 
post  of  observation. 

Mr.  Churchill  is  a  spasmodic  young  person,  pro- 
lific in  arrivals  and  departures,  and  with  feeHngs 
almost  as  agile  as  his  person.  There  are,  roughly 
speaking,  three  stages  in  the  portrayal:  the  splendor 
of  his  advent,  the  disillusion,  and  the  partial  re- 
habihtation.  Miss  Austen  has  hardly  time  enough 
for  thoroughness  in  the  report  of  all  three  processes, 
and  the  second  in  particular  is  hurried  and  mulcted. 
Frank  Churchill  is  variable;  he  is  Hght;  he  can 
be  momentarily  unfeeling.  So  much  we  know,  and 
we  are  by  no  means  completely  reassured  by  the 
condescensions  and  sumptuosities  of  his  almost  too 
bountiful  repentance.  We  are  not  clear  as  to  the 
extent  to  which  we  should  commiserate  or  congratu- 
late Jane  Fairfax.  In  one  point  it  seems  to  me  that 
Miss  Austen  has  committed  an  artistic  error.  After 
setting  Frank  Churchill  on  his  feet,  she  is  seized  with 
a  qualm  of  candor  or  a  jet  of  spite,  and  gives  us  a 
last  glimpse  of  the  young  man  (in  the  final  conversa- 
tion with  Emma  at  Mrs.  Weston's)  for  no  apparent 
purpose  but  that  of  convincing  us  that  he  is  a  maw- 
kish fribble.  This  comes  too  late.  I  have  enough  of 
the  New  England  housewife  in  me  to  be  horrified 
at  the  spectacle  of  muddy  foot-tracks  on  a  floor  that 
has  been  newly  mopped. 

I  confess  that  I  quite  agree  with  Emma  in  her  dis- 
like of  Jane  Fairfax.    I  grant  that  her  character  is 


108  JANE  AUSTEN 

exemplary,  but  example  may  be  quite  as  irksome  as 
precept.  The  irreproachableness  of  Jane  Fairfax  is 
a  reproach  to  all  the  onlookers.  There  are  two  main 
points  about  Jane,  her  reserve  and  her  pathos.  The 
one  should  command  respect,  and  the  other  should 
engage  sympathy.  Neither  fulfils  its  office.  There  is 
no  disguise  like  the  appearance  of  openness,  and 
nothing  invites  curiosity  like  the  appearance  of  re- 
serve. Jane  Fairfax's  bearing  has  the  indiscretion 
and  the  impropriety  of  a  whisper  in  company.  As 
for  her  sufferings,  there  are  people  who  have  a  talent 
for  endurance  which  is  little  short  of  an  entreaty  to 
destiny  to  unload  its  carload  of  misfortunes  at  their 
door.  These  conoments  are  of  course  rather  trivial, 
but  a  reader's  disposition  to  trifle  is  a  matter  of 
weight  for  the  novehst  and  critic.  I  doubt  if  Jane 
Austen  liked  Jane  Fairfax;  at  the  close  of  the  book 
Emma  and  Emma's  creator  seem  to  be  doing  pen- 
ance together. 

Miss  Bates,  hke  Mr.  Woodhouse,  is  a  humor  in 
the  old-fashioned  sense.  But,  hke  Mr.  Woodhouse, 
she  is  much  more  than  a  caricature,  though  the 
picture  is  extreme,  if  not  burlesque,  in  one  of  its 
phases.  The  elephant's  nose  is  greatly  elongated, 
but  the  general  size  of  the  animal  is  a  justification 
of  the  magnitude  of  his  proboscis.  Miss  Bates  has 
character  enough  to  bear  up  her  pecuHarity.  There 
is  something  snug  and  buxom  in  this  spinster,  the 
Hke  of  which  is  not  easily  to  be  found  in  the  novels 


EMMA  109 

of  Miss  Austen.  We  feel  that  she  would  get  on  with 
Mrs.  Nubbles  and  Mrs.  Lupin  and  Polly  Richards 
and  other  worthies  of  a  circle  with  which  most  of 
Jane's  characters  would  be  at  a  loss  to  fraternize. 
Her  hand,  if  touched,  would  be  warm — pudgy,  if 
you  insist,  but  warm;  and  there  is  hardly  another 
specimen  of  the  handiwork  of  her  creator  of  whom  the 
same  thing  could  be  securely  said.  She  has  an  artless 
faith  in  the  good-will  of  her  fellow-creatures  which 
illumines  and  adorns  the  world.  Everybody  is  glad 
to  survey  that  embeUishment  of  himself  which  faces 
him  in  the  trustful  geniaUty  of  that  simple  mind, 
and  the  reader  on  whom  she  has  never  looked  is  in- 
directly flattered  by  the  admiration  she  bestows  on 
his  inferiors. 

The  pecuharity  which  makes  her  the  dread  and 
wonder  of  her  neighbors  is  her  speech.  Miss  Bates 
is  the  rambling  monologist,  but  she  differs  from  her 
tribe  in  several  interesting  particulars.  The  Austen 
trade-mark  is  visible  in  the  precision  of  her  trim — 
her  ahnost  formal — volubiUty.  The  speech  of  her 
class  tends  to  coagulate,  to  become  a  paste — a  trait 
clearly  observable  in  the  much  less  cohesive,  but 
much  more  glutinous,  monologues  of  Mrs.  Nickleby. 
Miss  Bates  always  keeps  her  thread  even  when  she 
lets  it  dangle,  and  the  difference  between  her  and  the 
scatter-brained  monologist  is  the  difference  between 
excursion  and  wandering.  In  the  nineteenth  chapter 
Miss  Austen  has  some  important  circumstances  to 


110  JANE  AUSTEN 

impart  to  the  reader.  She  does  not  hesitate  to  in- 
trust the  conveyance  of  these  facts  to  the  progressive 
if  dilatory  conversation  of  Miss  Bates.  In  the  ball- 
room scene  the  speeches  are  sharply  pimctuated, 
cut  into  blocks  with  an  evident  concern  for  style 
underlying  all  the  superficial  inadvertence.  In  this 
respect  they  resemble  the  more  obviously  fabri- 
cated monologues  of  Blanche  Evers — later  Blanche 
Wright — in  Mr.  James's  barely  remembered  Con- 
fidence. 

Mrs.  Elton's  character  has  been  warmly  praised. 
In  those  interesting  Opinions  of  Emma  cited  in  the 
Life  and  Letters  of  Jane  Austen,  four  persons  are 
particular  in  theu-  admiration  of  Mrs.  Elton.  A  Miss 
Sharp,  who  has  sense  enough  to  dislike  Jane  Fair- 
fax, thinks  Mrs.  Elton  beyond  praise,  and  there  is  a 
Henry  Sanford  who  thinks  ''Mrs.  Elton  the  best- 
drawn  character  in  the  book."  Here,  again,  I  think 
of  Scott's  apt  judgment,  applied  with  such  doubtful 
aptness  to  Mr.  Woodhouse  and  Miss  Bates — that 
the  unpleasantness  of  a  reality  may  overcharge  the 
portrait.  Mrs.  Elton  is  clear,  but  disagreeable,  and 
we,  not  having  been  inured  to  the  regimen  of  Dothe- 
boys  Hall,  grow  tired  of  that  particular  mixture  of 
brimstone  and  treacle,  in  other  words  of  mahce  and 
smirking,  which  is  served  up  to  us  without  stint  in 
her  lavish  conversation.  The  case  would  be  less 
irksome  if  she  had  any  real  business  in  the  story. 
But,  as  I  have  already  observed,  her  office  is  merely 


EMMA  111 

that  of  a  screen  or  stop-gap,  and  her  impertinence 
is  emphasized  by  her  inutility. 

Again,  Mrs.  Elton  is  more  fooHsh  than  comic,  or, 
at  all  events,  she  does  not  amuse  in  the  degree  in 
which  she  repels.  She  has  not  quite  the  amount  or 
kind  of  folly  which  contents  a  reader  by  the  es- 
tabhshment  of  his  own  superiority.  To  insure  that 
result,  Mrs.  Elton  should  be  humbled.  Nothing 
of  the  sort  occurs;  Mrs.  Elton  is  secretly  abominated, 
but,  openly,  she  is  tolerated  and  deferred  to  by 
everybody  on  the  premises.  Mr.  Knightley  is 
taciturn;  Enuna  is  acquiescent;  Jane  Fairfax  is 
submissive;  Miss  Bates  is  idolatrous.  The  form  of 
portrayal  does  not  show  Miss  Austen  at  her  very 
best.  In  Mrs.  Elton's  conversation,  self-betrayal 
is  abnormally,  even  incredibly,  continuous;  indeed, 
it  goes  on  long  after  there  is  nothing  left  to  betray. 
It  is  only  fair  to  repeat  after  this  train  of  objections 
that  the  character  is  drawn  with  much  skill.  Mrs. 
Elton  is  real  to  us,  at  least  while  she  is  in  our  com- 
pany. In  the  memory  I  find  that  she  undergoes  a 
sort  of  disembodiment  or  dissolution  to  which  Mr. 
Woodhouse,  Emma,  Mr.  Ejiightley,  and  Miss  Bates 
are  by  no  means  subject. 

I  find  Mr.  Elton  a  more  satisfying  figure — I  would 
not  say  a  cleverer  piece  of  drawing — than  his  wife. 
In  Mrs.  Elton,  the  coloring  is  garish;  in  the  husband 
the  artist's  own  design  has  obliged  her  to  stay  her 
hand.     Mr.  Elton  is  Emma's  choice  for  Harriet, 


112  JANE  AUSTEN 

and  Emma  is  Harriet's  sincere,  if  very  condescend- 
ing, friend.  A  bomid  must  be  set  to  his  meanness. 
His  profession  clearly  sets  no  bound  to  it  in  the  eyes 
of  the  creator  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  CoUins.  Mr. 
Elton's  calling,  Hke  Mr.  Collins's,  appears  to  be  re- 
movable like  his  surplice  and  with  his  surplice.  He  is 
not  merely  not  rehgious;  he  is  not  even  clerical. 
He  is  a  handsome  young  fellow  in  whom  the  senti- 
mental and  the  mercenary  blend  as  amicably  as 
pohteness  and  rapacity  in  the  behavior  of  a  shop- 
keeper. He  is  full  of  arch  and  winning  ways,  trap- 
pings and  furbelows  of  manner,  the  forms  of  an 
effusiveness  that  is  partly  nature,  partly  convention, 
and  partly  strategy.  In  several  of  the  early  chapters 
through  which  Mr.  Elton  waltzes  so  briskly,  his 
character  no  less  than  his  attitude  toward  Harriet 
is  left  in  a  state  of  cunning  ambiguity.  "There  are 
cats"  said  Violet  Effingham  to  Phineas  Finn,  ''who 
play  with  their  mice  and  do  not  eat  them,  cats  who 
eat  their  mice  and  do  not  play  with  them,  and  cats 
who  play  with  their  mice  and  eat  them."  Miss 
Austen  may  be  trusted  to  eat  her  mouse  in  the  Elton 
case,  but  she  is  feUne  in  her  willingness  to  postpone 
her  meal  to  her  sport.  Mr.  Elton,  disappointed  in 
Emma,  retaliates  by  marrying  fashion  and  folly  in 
the  person  of  Augusta  Hawkins,  and  spends  the  rest  of 
his  time  more  quietly  in  the  wake  of  his  wife's  train 
and  the  lee  of  her  vocabulary.  The  insult  to  Harriet 
in  the  ball-room  scene  has  the  effect  of  a  sudden  de- 


EMMA  113 

scent  of  Miss  Austen's  fist  at  a  moment  when  we  ex- 
pected nothing  more  than  the  play  of  the  finger-tips. 

In  Harriet  Smith,  Miss  Austen  faces  a  difficulty. 
She  draws  character  as  it  were  in  straight  lines,  and 
if  there  is  anything  willowy  or  sinuous  in  the  con- 
tours of  her  subject,  the  need  of  adjustment  is  ob- 
vious. The  need  is  especially  insistent  in  a  young 
girl  like  Harriet  Smith.  The  problem  is  by  no 
means  hopeless.  Trollope,  with  a  similar  though 
slighter  propensity  to  the  rectihnear,  succeeded  in 
drawing  young  girls  of  an  ideal  charm  and  an  ade- 
quate suppleness.  Miss  Austen  asks  less  of  Harriet, 
but  her  success  in  getting  what  she  asks  is  consider- 
able. Miss  Smith  is  a  fight-haired  and  blue-eyed 
young  thing  whom  an  accident  of  birth  has  placed 
in  the  neutral  region  between  two  social  classes, 
without  assured  footing  or  firm  poise  in  either.  An 
American  girl  in  Harriet's  place  would  have  more 
spring  and  Hssomeness.  Her  mind  might  be  stored 
to  as  fittle  purpose  as  that  of  Harriet,  but  at  worst 
it  would  be  more  Uttered;  it  would  not  have  that 
effect  of  bare  walls  and  whitewash  which  belongs  to 
those  xmfumished  lodgings  otherwise  known  as  the 
mind  of  Harriet  Smith.  One  might  almost  complete 
the  figure  by  imagining  a  sign  ''To  Let"  suspended 
in  the  curtainless  window  of  Harriet's  mind  or  heart. 

A  character  fike  Harriet's  needs  the  embeUish- 
ment  of  simplicity,  and  in  the  formal  Austen  world 
simpficity  is  hard  to  come  by.     Harriet  uses  the 


114  JANE  AUSTEN 

buskined  diction  of  her  associates;  she  affects  judg- 
ment and  discretion  in  conformity  to  the  manners 
of  a  time  when  the  semblance  of  judgment  and  dis- 
cretion was  mandatory  even  upon  flighty  Uttle  girls. 
But  in  spite  of  this  dowager's  harness  which  fashion 
has  obliged  her  to  put  on,  she  remains  a  young  girl, 
and  Miss  Austen,  who  has  drawn  her  in  a  magnani- 
mous mood,  is  scrupulously  and  studiously  just  to 
her  good  qualities.  She  bears  her  disappointments 
with  unresentful  patience,  and  omniscience  in  the 
person  of  Mr.  Knightley  is  compelled  in  the  course 
of  time  to  retract  a  large  part  of  its  overbearing 
strictures.  Harriet  Smith  is  not  vulgar;  she  is  not 
flimsy;  she  is  not  missish.  She  is  girhsh,  school- 
girhsh — that  is  the  worst  that  can  be  said.  Miss 
Austen's  power  to  combine  attack  and  defense  in 
the  same  portrayal  is  worthy  of  all  praise.  Nothing 
can  be  better  than  the  manner  in  which  Harriet's 
fluttered  deference  and  bashful  vanity  are  conveyed. 
She  has  less  firmness  perhaps  than  any  other  of  Miss 
Austen's  characters,  who,  take  them  as  a  class, 
are  a  tenacious  and  resolute  set.  But  if  the  woman 
lacks  individuality,  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  the 
portrait.  An  artist  of  Miss  Austen's  power  can  im- 
part individuahty  to  the  drawing  by  the  very  touches 
which  deny  it  to  the  sitter. 

The  value  of  the  characterization  in  Emma  is 
great,  and  the  novel  is  more  individual,  more  in  a 
class  by  itself,  than  any  of  the  other  books  but 


EMMA  115 

Pride  and  Prejudice.  In  Pride  and  Prejudice,  how- 
ever, the  mdividuaUty  is  that  of  the  author;  in 
Emma  it  is  that  of  the  village.  The  communal 
effect,  while  not  exphcitly  sought,  is  strongly  im- 
parted. This  explains,  almost  justifies,  the  negation 
of  plot;  we  feel  that  plots,  hke  circuses,  would  skip 
Highbury.  We  feel  that  the  stories  of  such  a  region 
would  copy  the  deUberation  of  its  brooks,  and  that 
the  intervals  between  events  might  be  patterned  on 
the  spaces  between  houses.  We  are  in  a  world  with 
broad  margins,  a  world  in  which  everybody's  dole  of 
space  and  time  is  larger  than  in  the  compact  and 
bustling  metropohs.  There  is  a  reserved  and  lei- 
surely but  persevering  social  life,  loose  but  secure 
ties,  mahce  enough  to  temper  the  dulness,  and  good- 
will enough  to  temper  the  maUce,  a  placidity  which  is 
patient  of  the  usual,  happily  blent  with  a  curiosity 
to  which  the  mildest  forms  of  the  unusual  are  excit- 
ing. Is  a  society  of  this  kind  vacuous?  Its  neighbor- 
ship to  the  earth  and  the  processes  by  which  earth  is 
tilled  and  man  is  fed  prevent  it  from  becoming  that. 
Bovine  in  a  sense  the  life  of  ''Emma"  is,  but  "bo- 
vine" is  a  word  of  various  suggestiveness,  and  in- 
cluded creatures  in  the  early  Greek  mythology  who 
were  thought  worthy  of  Apollo's  mastership  and  of 
the  forays  of  the  youthful  Hermes.  We  are  not  sur- 
prised that  a  book  to  which  such  an  epithet  should 
be  even  loosely  apphcable  should  be  the  healthiest 
and  sunniest  of  Miss  Austen's  works. 


CHAPTER  VI 
PERSUASION 

Persuasion  is  a  story  without  a  plot.  In  1811,  the 
date  of  its  commencement,  a  plot  or  the  semblance 
of  a  plot,  was  imperative,  and  a  large  part  of  the 
author's  ingenuity  is  devoted  to  the  concealment  of 
the  omission  from  the  eye  of  the  analytic  reader. 
The  problem  is  very  similar  to  that  of  Colonel  and 
Mrs.  Crawley,  who  undertook  to  hve  fashionably 
on  exactly  nothing  a  year.  The  original  economy 
of  mental  effort  in  the  fable  has  forced  Miss  Austen 
into  such  an  expenditure  of  ingenuity  on  makeshifts 
and  evasions  that  it  might  have  been  cheaper  in  the 
long  run  to  pay  her  way. 

Some  years  before  the  story  opens  Anne  Elhot 
and  Captain  Wentworth  had  confessed  a  mutual 
passion,  but  Anne,  in  deference  to  the  will  of  a 
father  and  submission  to  the  counsels  of  a  friend,  had 
broken  off  the  engagement.  Eight  years  later,  at 
the  opening  of  the  narrative,  the  lovers  are  brought 
together  once  more.  The  renewal  of  the  engage- 
ment is  the  obvious  consequence.  Miss  Austen  is 
bound  to  prevent,  or  rather  postpone,  the  arrival 
of  a  consummation  so  portentous  to  a  novelist,  but 
her  embarrassments  are  very  great.    The  pecuniary 

116 


PERSUASION  117 

obstacle  to  the  union  has  disappeared,  and  no  re- 
source is  left  but  the  evocation  of  drama  out  of 
changes  of  heart  and  the  demand  for  psychic  read- 
justments. But  here  again  the  situation  is  as  com- 
placent to  the  lovers  as  it  is  obdurate  to  Miss  Austen. 
The  man  and  woman  still  care  passionately  for 
each  other,  though  the  man  for  a  short  period  wilfully 
feigns  the  contrary  to  himself.  What  is  left  for  Miss 
Austen  to  do?  She  temporizes,  and  of  these  tempor- 
izings the  book  is  made. 

A  rival  is  provided  for  Anne  and  another  for  Cap- 
tain Went  worth,  but  as  neither  of  these  rivals  makes 
the  smallest  impression  on  the  incorrigible  loyalty 
of  the  primary  actors,  the  gain  in  drama  is  hardly 
worth  the  cost  in  trouble.  Captain  Wentworth  is 
drawn  into  some  random  attentions  to  Louisa  Mus- 
grove.  Louisa  suffers  a  fall  for  which  his  nicety  of 
conscience  makes  him  answerable.  He  is  ready  to 
offer  the  restorative  of  marriage;  but  Miss  Austen, 
who  is  equally  anxious  to  insure  and  to  postpone  his 
reunion  with  Anne,  becomes  vastly  disquieted,  and 
snatches  Louisa  from  Captain  Wentworth  by  the 
crude  expedient  of  a  precipitate  and  causeless  at- 
tachment between  Louisa  and  another  man.  We 
have  retraced  our  steps  and  stand  once  more  at  the 
point  of  departure. 

Miss  Austen's  perplexity  is  great,  but  a  doctor's 
resource  for  a  troublesome  case  and  a  novehst's  ex- 
pedient for  an  invaUd  story  are  one  and  the  same. 


118  JANE  AUSTEN 

They  must  go  to  Bath.  At  Bath  people  move  about 
and  bustle  in  the  effort  to  hide  their  want  of  occupa- 
tion. A  story  in  the  same  predicament  may  grate- 
fully accept  a  Hke  rehef .  Nearly  everybody  goes  to 
Bath.  Anne  meets  a  suitor,  a  cousin  also  named 
EUiot,  a  man  of  agreeable  manners  and  of  that  de- 
signing character  which  agreeable  manners  so  often 
overhe  in  the  novels  of  Miss  Austen.  The  jealousy 
of  Captain  Wentworth  is  excited.  An  old  acquaint- 
ance of  Anne,  whose  perfunctory  role  in  the  story 
is  adumbrated  in  the  name  of  Smith,  unmasks  the 
baseness  of  Mr.  Elhot's  character.  As  Anne's  re- 
luctance to  accept  any  suitor  but  Captain  Went- 
worth is  invincible,  the  utihty  of  this  disclosure 
remains  obscure.  Even  the  exertions  of  a  novelist 
can  no  longer  keep  the  lovers  apart,  but  the  con- 
trivance by  which  understanding  is  brought  about 
is  so  clumsy  and  artificial  that  perhaps  it  ought  not 
to  surprise  us  to  hear  that  it  has  been  warmly  ad- 
mired. Anne,  in  a  rather  intimate  conversation  with 
a  rather  distant  acquaintance,  expresses  her  deepest 
convictions  on  the  subject  of  the  duration  of  attach- 
ments in  woman.  Captain  Wentworth,  in  the  same 
room,  at  a  distance  so  artfully  planned  that  he  can 
hear  perfectly  without  being  suspected  of  overhear- 
ing, becomes  aware  of  Anne's  unchanging  fidehty. 
He  writes  a  letter  on  the  spot  containing  such  apos- 
trophes as  ''You  good,  you  excellent  creature,"  and 
such  asseverations  as  "You  pierce  my  soul."    Anne, 


PERSUASION  119 

fortunately  in  a  mood  which  makes  criticism  of 
style  impossible,  responds  in  the  affirmative,  and 
happiness,  abrupt  from  the  very  length  of  its  delay, 
descends  upon  the  reunited  lovers. 

One  episode  of  dramatic  interest  is  handled  with  an 
unconcern  which  makes  the  mystery  of  its  insertion 
doubly  dark.  A  species  of  adventuress,  Mrs.  Clay, 
has  obtained  a  footing  in  the  household  of  Anne's 
father.  Sir  Walter  EUiot,  and  seeks  to  entrap  the 
widowed  baronet  into  a  marriage.  The  jealous  heir 
to  the  title  and  estate  baffles  this  design  by  diverting 
her  affections  to  himself.  The  woman,  in  spite  of 
the  projecting  tooth  and  freckles,  is  artistically 
hardly  more  than  a  profile,  her  story  is  a  mere  edge, 
and  it  is  hard  to  see  why  Miss  Austen  should  have 
cared  to  make  anything  of  a  point  of  which  she  cared 
to  make  so  Uttle. 

Miss  Austen's  work  in  Persuasion  may  be  de- 
scribed as  teasing  the  reader,  finding  excuse  after 
excuse  for  withholding  from  him  a  satisfaction  which 
she  is  almost  as  eager  to  grant  as  he  to  obtain.  It  is 
quite  true  that  character  and  psychology  find  a 
way  through  the  broad  intervals  in  this  loosely 
matted  fabric,  but  it  is  also  true  that  they  make  a 
passage  even  more  successfully  through  the  compact 
and  serried  woof  of  a  novel  like  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

The  book  is  meant  to  show  that  in  the  disposition 
of  their  hearts  young  people  are  often  wiser  than 
their  confident  and  urgent  seniors.    The  proposition 


120  JANE  AUSTEN 

is  sound  enough,  is  even  stale  to  our  contumacious 
generation,  but  in  Miss  Austen's  time  it  no  doubt 
savored  of  revolution,  and  the  noveUst's  timidity 
in  the  advocacy  of  courage  makes  her  load  her 
doctrine  with  disabling  quahfications.  She  recom- 
mends independence  to  young  people  in  very  much 
the  fashion  in  which  Mr.  Woodhouse  recommended 
the  questionable  dishes  on  his  table  to  the  consump- 
tion of  Mrs.  Goddard  and  Miss  Bates.  "Miss 
Bates,  let  Emma  help  you  to  a  Uttle  bit  of  tart — a 
very  Httle  bit.  .  .  .  I  do  not  advise  the  custard. 
Mrs.  Goddard,  what  say  you  to  hah  a  glass  of  wine? 
A  small  half-glass,  put  into  a  tumbler  of  water?  I 
do  not  think  it  could  disagree  with  you." 

We  noted  in  Pride  and  Prejudice  a  list  of  sixteen 
characters  who  might  almost  be  termed  prmcipals 
with  a  secondary  Ust  of  eight  whom  a  Uttle  persuasion 
or  good-nature  might  allure  into  the  same  category. 
Mansfield  Park,  a  family  tale,  retrenches  this  abund- 
ance, and  even  Emma,  which  is  almost  the  chronicle 
of  a  village,  is  not  populous  after  the  style  of  Pride 
and  Prejudice.  But  in  Persuasion,  the  absence  of 
plot  which  restricts  the  capacity  of  the  main  char- 
acters to  furnish  diversion,  obHges  Miss  Austen, 
like  a  spectacular  dramatist,  to  pack  the  stage  as  an 
offset  to  the  scantness  of  the  entertainment.  There 
are  eighteen  characters  of  appreciable  value:  Sir 
Walter  ElUot,  EUzabeth  Elliot,  Anne  Elliot,  WiUiam 
EUiot,  Charles  Musgrove,  Mary  Musgrove,  Henri- 


PERSUASION  121 

etta  Musgrove,  Louisa  Musgrove,  Charles  Hayter, 
Captain  Wentworth,  Captain  Benwick,  Captain 
Harville,  Admiral  Croft,  Mrs.  Croft,  Mrs.  Clay, 
Mrs.  Smith,  Lady  Russell,  Mr.  Shepherd.  Few 
of  these  people  do  much;  even  Anne  and  Captain 
Wentworth  are  by  no  means  burdened  with  occu- 
pation; but  not  one  of  them,  however  few  and  brief 
his  appearances,  is  a  mere  blank  or  cavity  when  he 
does  appear.  While  this  is  true  and  interesting,  it 
must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  sum  total  of 
effective  characterization  in  this  novel  is  decidedly 
smaller  than  in  any  other  work  of  its  creator.  There 
is  a  shyness  in  the  book  which  seems  to  place  a 
barrier  between  us  and  the  persons  of  the  drama. 
The  novel  declines  to  face  us;  it  lacks  the  immediacy 
of  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

Anne  EUiot  is  the  charm,  as  she  is  the  nucleus  and 
centre,  of  Persuasion.  She  is  just  the  sort  of  placid 
and  gentle  person  whose  virtues  are  a  security  to 
every  one  except  the  noveUst.  In  Scott's  hands 
she  would  have  been  a  Lucy  Bertram,  as  indistinct 
as  "water  is  in  water,"  or  at  best  a  Lucy  Ashton 
owing  chiefly  to  lunacy  her  abihty  to  excite  us.  Miss 
Austen  remarks  of  Anne  with  instructive  frankness: 
"She  is  almost  too  good  for  me."  Anne  is  twenty- 
seven,  and  is  supposed  to  have  lost  her  bloom,  but 
on  this  deUcate  point  there  is  a  vacillation  that  shakes 
our  faith  in  Miss  Austen's  vigilance.  The  loss  of 
beauty  has  gone  so  far  that  Frederick  Wentworth, 


122  JANE  AUSTEN 

after  a  separation  of  eight  years,  finds  her  "altered 
beyond  knowledge,"  or  at  best  "  wretchedly  altered." 
At  Lyme,  not  long  after  this,  her  appearance  has 
mended  to  the  point  of  making  a  deep  and  lasting 
impression  on  the  mind  of  a  virtual  stranger — a 
cousin  who  sees  her  for  the  first  time  withont  knowing 
of  the  cousinship.  Miss  Austin  feels  that  these  are 
dubious  procedures,  and  falters  out  something  about 
the  west  wind  and  its  reparative  power  upon  faded 
beauty.  It  is  clear  that  we  have  all  underrated  the 
west  wind. 

I  am  fond  of  Anne,  but  I  suspect  that  she  is  rather 
sjnnpathetic  than  interesting.  She  is  really  in  love, 
and  the  love  in  her  is  perhaps  more  positive  than 
Anne  herself.  There  is  also  a  core  of  vigor  in  the  por- 
trayal, an  infiltration  from  the  robustness  of  Miss 
Austen's  temperament,  which  blends  with  sensibihty 
and  melancholy  and  fragihty  without  either  losing 
itself  or  nullifying  them.  For  my  own  pleasure,  I 
could  wish  that  Anne  was  less  subject  to  agitation. 
I  feel  the  same  mixture  of  pity  and  irritation  before 
the  quivers  and  tremors  that  I  should  feel  for  a 
woman  whose  veils  and  draperies  were  blown  hither 
and  thither  in  the  turbulence  of  a  high  wind.  The 
embarrassment  may  be  real,  but  the  costume  seems 
to  invite  it.  Anne  has  the  wisdom  with  which  one 
must  always  reckon  in  Miss  Austen's  heroines  with- 
out the  antiseptic  humor  which  attends  it  in  the  best 
of  them. 


PERSUASION  nS 

Anne's  father,  Sir  Walter  Elliot,  is  an  insolvent 
baronet,  obsessed  with  his  rank,  and  an  elderly 
widower,  infatuated  with  his  own  beauty.  Among 
Miss  Austen's  extreme  oomic  types  he  is  the  only 
one  who  approximates  the  bore.  I  think  one  desires 
that  vanity  should  be  nimble;  Sir  Walter  is  heavy 
and  pompous.  In  one  point  he  is  a  sore  trial  to  one's 
faith.  That  a  man  past  fifty  should  pique  himself 
on  his  beauty  is  credible  enough.  That  his  demand 
for  beauty  in  women  should  be  peremptory  is  ex- 
cusable. But  that  he  should  insist  that  another 
man — even  a  man  past  fifty — is  recreant  to  his 
social  obHgations  unless  he  flaunts  a  handsome  face, 
is  outside  of  nature,  as  nature  is  conceived  by  a 
Western  American  like  myself.  His  company  even 
in  print  is  repugnant,  and  Miss  Austen,  soHcitous 
of  good  measure,  has  added  a  sheer  badness  of  heart 
which  was  hardly  required  for  the  exploitation  of  his 
foUies. 

In  Elizabeth,  the  eldest  daughter,  the  folly  is 
hardly  comic,  and  it  is  combined  with  an  asperity 
which  makes  the  narrative  thorny  without  further- 
ing the  plot.  The  third  daughter,  Mary,  married  to 
Charles  Musgrove,  is  an  effective  specimen  of  the 
imaginary  invahd  type.  The  point  in  which  Mary 
contrasts  happily  with  her  tribe  is  that  while  she 
complains  she  does  not  whimper.  She  is  crisp  where 
the  ordinary  self-cherisher  is  sodden,  and  there  is  a 
briskness  in  her  protestations  of  infirmity  which  re- 


124  JANE  AUSTEN 

lieves  the  alarm  of  the  most  credulous  listener.  Her 
changes  of  front  are  rather  acrobatic,  but  they  stop 
short  of  that  almost  professional  gusto  which  stamps 
the  agihties  of  Isabella  Thorpe.  If  haK  of  ]Mary 
lies  outside  of  nature,  the  other  half  is  sufficmgly 
natural,  and  the  He  and  the  truth  divide  the  pun- 
gency pretty  evenly  between  them. 

Charles  Musgrove  as  a  portrait  is  far  finer,  though 
much  less  piquant,  than  his  wife.  The  fineness  Hes 
in  the  art  that  has  kept  an  ordinary  character  from 
melting  into  the  mass  with  which  its  afiiUations  are  so 
plentiful.  Charles  is  a  country  gentleman  with  a  fond- 
ness for  hunting.  In  mind  he  is  at  once  rather  vacuous 
and  pretty  sensible,  and  in  his  disposition  a  healthy 
selfishness  finds  itself  on  the  best  of  terms  with  an 
ample  good-nature.  Nothing  in  him  is  overcharged, 
not  even  the  commonplace.  Daudet  remarked  of 
a  certain  X:  "He  excels  in  mediocrity."  Not  even 
this  form  of  extravagance  can  be  charged  against 
Miss  Austen's  dehneation  of  Charles  JMusgrovc. 

The  parents  of  Charles  are  httle  more  than  a  back- 
ground for  their  children,  and  Charles's  two  sisters, 
Henrietta  and  Louisa,  offer  httle  to  win  the  atten- 
tion or  anchor  the  memory.  Henrietta,  indeed,  is 
less  than  a  sketch,  but  one  of  the  shrewdest  points 
among  the  secondary  realisms  of  the  book  is  as- 
sociated with  her  name.  Her  momentary  and  hesi- 
tating estrangement  from  Charles  Haytcr,  followed, 
not  instantly  but  quickly,  by  an  eager  return  to  the 


PERSUASION  125 

old  suitor,  is  wholly  in  the  key  of  life.  With  Louisa 
a  little  more  is  attempted.  If  Miss  Austen  does  not 
actually  begin  to  draw  Louisa,  at  least  we  can  see 
her  biting  the  end  of  her  pencil.  Louisa  affects 
backbone,  and  Nemesis  retorts  with  a  fall  in  which 
the  spine  nearly  comes  to  grief.  Captain  Went- 
worth  has  a  preference  for  women  of  strong  char- 
acter, and  the  strength  of  Louisa's  character  had 
been  growing  by  leaps  and  bounds  ever  since  she 
discovered  this  preference  in  the  captain.  One  can- 
not help  speculating  on  the  possible  consequences 
of  his  expression  of  a  predilection  for  fragile  and 
tremulous  women.  In  the  section  of  the  country 
in  which  I  Hve  one  often  sees  over  a  vacant  lot  the 
announcement:  "Owner  will  build  to  suit  tenant." 
One  cannot  but  feel  that  Louisa  Musgrove's  char- 
acter building  was  regulated  on  the  same  principle. 
There  are  four  sailors  in  Persuasion,  of  whom  the 
most  prominent  and  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
is  Anne's  lover,  Captain  Wentworth.  We  do  not 
see  much  of  the  captain.  He  is  not  reserved  per- 
haps, but  he  is  very  far  from  talkative.  He  has 
special  reasons  for  effacing  himself  in  Anne's  pres- 
ence, and  as  Anne  is  our  conductress  through  the 
story,  and  we  see  and  hear  only  through  Anne's 
eyes  and  ears,  our  impressions  are  both  incomplete 
and  second-hand.  We  hear  much  of  his  handsome 
person  and  determined  character,  and  still  more  of 
his   agreeable   and   distinguished   manners.     Miss 


126  JANE  AUSTEN 

Austen  in  this  novel  appears  to  have  humored  in 
her  sisters  or  herseK  that  markedly  feminine  point 
of  view  which  regards  man  as  a  furtherance  to  soirees. 
Captain  Wentworth  is  manly  enough,  but  what  im- 
presses everybody  in  the  story,  including  the  au- 
thoress, is  his  being  so  immaculately  eUgible.  From 
Congreve's  Ben  in  Love  for  Love  to  Smollett's  Com- 
modore Trunnion  and  Dickens's  Captain  Cuttle, 
the  conversation  of  sailors  has  been  a  sort  of  brine; 
indeed  the  sea  lingo  has  often  risen,  or  sunk,  into  a 
mannerism.  It  is  rather  curious  that  the  only  novel- 
ist, I  suppose,  in  EngUsh  hterature  who  had  two 
brothers  in  the  admiralty  should  paint  sailors  so 
emphatically  in  their  unprofessional  capacity,  their 
capacity  as  gentlemen.  The  four  sailors  in  Persuasion 
mention  the  sea;  they  even  discuss  sliips:  but  the  pro- 
fession to  which  they  are  wedded  appears  in  their 
conversation  in  much  the  same  incidental  and  inter- 
mittent way  in  which  their  human  consorts  would 
appear.  Their  speech  doesn't  "  foam  tar,"  if  I  may 
appropriate  and  pervert  a  phrase  of  Spenser's. 

Captain  Harville,  who  enters  the  story  under  the 
disadvantage  of  being  called  "  a  perfect  gentleman," 
never  recovers  from  this  initial  bruise.  I  do  not 
know  whether  his  gentihty  is  supposed  to  be  re- 
enforced  by  his  uttering  one  speech  with  a  "deep 
sigh,"  and  another  with  a  "quivering  lip."  He  cer- 
2i  tainly  qualifies  himself  to  take  part  in  the  stilted 
dialogue  which  reveals  the  state  of  iVnne's  heart 


PERSUASION  127 

to  the  palpitating  Captain  Wentworth  in  what  is 
almost  a  modernized  version  of  a  mediaeval  debat. 

Captain  Benwick  is  another  plaintive  sailor.  The 
recent  loss  of  his  betrothed  has  doubled  his  sen- 
sibihty  to  the  Bride  of  Ahydos  and  to  the  charms  of 
other  women.  I  will  not  say  that  Captain  Benwick 
is  the  male  counterpart  to  the  woman  in  Maupas- 
sant's story  who,  visiting  her  lover's  grave  in  the 
earUest  stages  of  bereavement,  accepted  the  con- 
solations of  another  lover  on  the  spot.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  in  less  than  a  year  after  the  death 
of  Fanny  Captain  Benwick  engaged  himself  to 
Louisa,  having  previously  encom-aged  his  friends 
to  beheve  that  he  was  about  to  engage  himself  to 
Anne.  The  character  is  uninteresting,  though  the 
psychology  is  probable.  The  mood  of  sentimental 
contemplation  which  fideUty  induces  is  favorable  to 
infidehty. 

The  only  sailor  in  whom  any  salt  is  perceptible  is 
the  excellent  and  excellently  pictured  Admiral  Croft. 
He  is  a  natural  and  lovable  person,  fuU  of  quiet 
bustle  and  tender  whimsicahty,  with  the  half -coaxing 
imperiousness  in  which  an  inherently  modest  man 
finds  a  covert  for  his  modesty.  His  interest  in  affairs 
of  the  heart  and  his  total  inabihty  to  follow  their 
complications  endear  him  to  the  more  discerning 
sex.  He  is  one  of  the  few  humorous  characters  in 
Miss  Austen  who  owe  nothing  to  exaggeration.  H' , 
wife  is  exactly  what  a  wife  should  be — a  person  whose 


128  JANE  AUSTEN 

relation  to  him  is  symbolized  in  her  place,  side  by 
side  with  him  in  the  great  world  and  opposite — not 
adverse — to  him  in  domesticity. 

Mr.  Elliot  is  the  man  of  shrewd  brain  and  of 
unexceptionable  manners  who  dispenses  with  the 
impedimenta  of  a  heart  and  conscience.  The 
exemplar  of  this  type  is  perhaps  the  Edmmid  of 
King  Lear,  and  it  finds  more  recent  analogues  in  the 
Rastignacs  of  the  Comedie  Humaine  and  the  Lord 
Illingworths  and  Dorian  Grays  of  Oscar  Wilde. 
Miss  Austen  is  chary  in  the  portraiture  of  an  only 
half-congenial  type,  and  her  Mr.  EUiot  differs  from 
his  class  chiefly  in  the  fact  that  he  Uves  rather  more 
in  the  salubrities  of  his  attractive  surface  and  rather 
less  in  the  sordidness  of  his  base  interior  than  the 
beguihng  hypocrite  of  average  fiction.  This  seems 
to  have  the  indorsement  of  nature.  If  a  man's  house 
has  a  pleasant  veranda  and  a  fetid  living-room, 
common  sense  and  human  impulse  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  he  spend  the  better  part  of  liis  time  on 
the  veranda.  Mr.  EUiot's  relation  to  Mrs.  Clay 
is  something  like  that  of  Fabrice  to  Clorinde  in 
Augier's  UAventuriere — the  relation,  in  a  word,  of 
the  jealous  kinsman  to  the  designing  intruder.  This 
intrigue,  which  is  not  at  all  in  Miss  Austen's  way,  is 
reduced  in  her  gingerly  treatment  to  a  faint  outline, 
and  a  bold  and  brilliant  sequel,  which  is  still  less  in 
her  way,  is  smuggled,  so  to  speak,  into  eight  fines  of 
the  concluding  chapter.    This  sequel  is  the  victiimza- 


PERSUASION  129 

tion  by  Mrs.  Clay  of  the  very  man  whose  diplomacy 
has  thwarted  her  designs  for  the  victimization  of  his 
cousin.  Of  Mrs.  Clay  httle  is  visible  but  her  freckles 
and  her  projecting  tooth;  the  most  exacting  reader 
craves  no  more. 

Mrs.  Smith  is  that  virtuous  woman  in  reduced 
circumstances  to  whom  so  many  novels  have  offered 
an  asylum.  Her  innocence  hardly  extenuates  her 
dulness.  Lady  Russell  is  one  of  those  exemplary 
persons  whose  judgment  lends  a  deadly  effectiveness 
to  its  own  blunders. 

In  Persuasion  there  are  but  four  characters  of  real 
value:  Aime  EUiot,  Mary  Musgrove,  Charles  Mus- 
grove,  Admiral  Croft.  As  a  group  these  are  far 
inferior  to  interest  to  a  similar  quartet  taken  from  a 
novel  so  reduced  in  scale  and  so  moderately  peopled 
as  Northanger  Abbey — to  be  specific,  with  such  a 
quartet  as  Catherine  Morland,  Henry  Tilney,  John 
Thorpe,  Isabella  Thorpe.  When  this  showing  in 
character  is  combined  with  the  conspicuous  feeble- 
ness in  plot,  the  secondary  place  of  Persuasion  in 
Miss  Austen's  work  is  unmistakable. 


CHAPTER   VII 
THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS 

The  full  criticisms  I  have  given  to  the  plots  of  the 
several  novels  will  enable  me  to  abridge  my  general 
comments  on  the  Austen  plots.  I  may  say,  in  a 
word,  that  Sense  and  Sensibility  reads  like  the 
'prentice-work  of  a  bom  expert;  Pride  and  Prejudice, 
speaking  broadly,  is  unreservedly  excellent;  North- 
anger  Abbey  begins  with  mature  power,  only  to 
relapse  into  juvenihty;  Mansfield  Park,  in  its  ce- 
mented love-affairs,  is  a  much  reduced  ^ut  apprecia- 
ble success  on  the  same  hnes  as  Pride  and  Prejudice; 
Emma  is  a  haK  lucky,  half  unlucky,  shift  to  a  newer 
and  looser  method;  Persuasion  is  an  imqualified 
failure.  I  speak  solely  with  reference  to  plot.  My 
own  order  would  be  as  follows:  first,  and  much  the 
first,  Pride  and  Prejudice;  second,  Mansfield  Park 
and  Emma  almost  on  a  level;  fourth,  at  a  marked 
distance.  Sense  and  Sensibility;  fifth,  again,  at  a 
distance,  Northanger  Abbey;  and,  lastly.  Persuasion. 

So  wide  a  grade  in  so  scant  a  field  is  remarkable; 
and  probably  Mansfield  Park  and  Emma  indicate 
the  normal  level  of  a  talent  which  unconcern  lowered 
in  Persuasion  and  accident  raised  in  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice.   The  difference  between  the  plots  of  Mansfield 

130 


THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS  131 

Park  and  Emma  in  kind  is  much  greater  than  the 
difference  in  merit.  My  feehng  prefers  Emma;  my 
reason,  Mansfield  Park;  and  in  such  conflicts  I  think 
it  reasonable  to  prefer  one's  feeling.  Mansfield  Park 
is  an  old-fashioned  tale,  somewhat  cumbered  with  a 
biographical  and  a  domestic  bias,  neither  of  which 
is  in  the  least  favorable  to  strictness  of  logical  con- 
tinuity. Emma  is  a  village  chronicle  or  civic  record, 
a  later  genus,  which  Bulwer-Lytton  was  to  pursue 
in  the  first  part  of  My  Novel,  and  Trollope  to  adum- 
brate in  the  Barsetshire  series,  and  to  which  George 
Eliot  was  to  give  the  distinction  of  rounded  finahty 
in  Middlemarch.  In  such  a  case  the  looseness  of  the 
plan  is  the  defense  of  the  looseness  of  the  particulars; 
a  hole  in  a  tightly  woven  basket  is  a  far  more  serious 
offense  than  an  interval  of  the  size  of  a  hole  in  a 
basket  of  which  the  woof  is  avowedly  open.  The 
independence  of  the  Elton-Smith  and  Churchill- 
Fairfax  love-affairs  in  Emma  is  inoffensive,  because 
the  reader  has  not  been  lantern-led  by  the  supposi- 
tion that  one  of  them  was  to  influence  the  other. 
But  the  failure  of  the  EUiot  courtship  to  exert  any 
influence  upon  the  relations  between  Anne  EUiot  and 
Captain  Wentworth  in  Persuasion  is  an  offense, 
because  the  reader  has  been  induced  to  confide  in  its 
relevancy. 

Jane  Austen  was  very  fond  of  persons  in  her  novels, 
and  her  fondness  was  comprehensive;  she  had  ac- 
quired from  those  provincial  balls  in  which  she  half 


132  JANE  AUSTEN 

eagerly,  half  deprecatingly,  participated  a  relish  for 
watching  a  dozen  or  two  of  people  in  simultaneous 
and  loosely  comphcated  action.  A  taste  of  this  kind 
is  inimical  to  logic,  especially  if  it  be  combined  with  a 
predilection  for  truth.  Nature  is  thoroughly  mascu- 
line in  her  fondness  for  logic,  that  is  for  an  internal  or 
ultimate  logic;  but  she  is  brazenly  feminine  in  the 
fitful  and  desultory  way  in  which  logic  is  distributed 
among  the  appearances  of  things.  On  the  surface — 
and  novels  in  the  broad  sense  deal  with  surfaces — she 
refuses  to  be  compactly  or  intricately  logical.  She  is 
stubborn  in  her  reluctance  to  cast  the  relations  of  a 
dozen  persons  for  a  considerable  period  into  logical 
form.  If  a  noveHst  wants  to  portray  many  persons, 
he  must  choose  between  logic  and  nature,  in  other 
words  between  artifice  and  incoherence.  Dickens,  in 
his  populously  intricate  fictions,  to  his  gain  and  to  his 
loss,  chose  artifice.  But  for  Jane  Austen  the  grand 
scale  of  Dickens  was  impracticable.  Her  world 
was  a  Belgium — populous  but  minute.  Moreover, 
never  easy  outside  of  nature  and  those  simple  though 
notable  modifications  of  nature  to  which  she  was  in- 
clined, she  had  neither  taste  nor  capacity  for  artifice. 
The  result  is  a  falling-off  in  coherence.  The 
amount  of  injury  which  this  did  to  her  work  will  be 
variously  estimated,  but  the  story  as  story  has  so 
declined  in  authority  in  our  day  that  a  mere  crack  in 
its  frame  evokes  no  hvely  displeasure.  The  world  on 
this  point  has  all  but  revolted   to  Jane  Austen. 


THE   GROUP  OF  NOVELS  133 

Moreover,  Jane  was  a  true  craftsman  in  her  way. 
She  Uked  her  work — Uked  soUcitude  in  her  work. 
The  adaptations,  the  congruities,  the  comities,  of 
particulars,  were  dear  to  her  woman's  hand.  With- 
out being  scrupulous,  she  was  nice.  If  she  permitted 
large  folds  in  her  work,  it  amused  her  to  smooth  out 
the  Uttle  wrinkles.  A  very  clear  illustration  of  what 
is  meant  may  be  found  in  the  use  of  the  Palmers  in 
Sense  and  Sensibility.  The  Palmers  are  really 
quite  otiose  in  the  story;  Marianne's  sickness  did 
not  require  the  appropriation  of  their  country- 
house.  But  the  visit,  though  badly  conceived,  is 
deftly  prearranged  by  the  introduction  of  the  Palmers 
in  the  first  half  of  the  tale,  and  an  urgent,  farsighted 
invitation  to  the  two  sisters  to  spend  their  Christmas 
at  Cleveland.  The  same  thing  is  observable  in 
Emma.  In  that  placid,  yet  vigorous,  novel  an  ex- 
quisite art  overUes  a  clumsy  art;  everything  falls  to 
pieces,  but  the  pieces  cling  together.  In  a  letter 
criticising  a  manuscript  novel  of  her  niece,  Anna 
Lefroy,  Miss  Austen  says:  "Had  you  not  better 
give  some  hint  of  St.  Juhan's  early  history  in  the 
beginning  of  the  story?"  In  Persuasion,  written 
partly  in  failing  health,  she  is  sometimes  un- 
observant of  her  own  precept.  Mrs.  Smith  is  in- 
troduced in  Chapter  XVII  without  the  salve  of  an 
anticipatory  reference  in  the  early  chapters.  Let 
not  the  young  reader  be  too  much  startled  at  these 
inconsistencies.     The  willingness  to  work  hard  to 


134  JANE  AUSTEN 

avoid  a  bad  error  in  its  association  with  the  unwill- 
ingness to  work  harder  to  avoid  a  worse  is  one  of  the 
most  normal  if  least  logical  things  in  that  normally 
illogical  contrivance  known  as  human  nature. 

I  think  we  shall  find  in  Miss  Austen's  style  another 
illustration  of  the  same  form  of  inconsistency.  I 
should  call  her  style,  in  the  first  instance,  a  diagonal 
between  her  taste  and  her  conscience,  and,  in  the 
second  instance,  a  compromise  between  her  zeal  and 
her  ease.  To  take  up  the  first  point:  the  following 
sentences  from  her  letters  will  show  how  she  wrote 
when  she  obeyed  her  instinct. 

Your  abuse  of  our  gowns  amuses  but  does  not  discourage  me; 
I  shall  take  mine  to  be  made  up  next  week,  and  the  more  I  look 
at  it  the  better  it  pleases  me.  My  cloak  came  on  Tuesday,  and, 
though  I  expected  a  good  deal,  the  beauty  of  the  lace  astonished 
me.  It  is  too  handsome  to  be  worn — almost  too  handsome  to  be 
looked  at.  The  glass  is  all  safely  arrived  also,  and  gives  great 
satisfaction.  The  wine-glasses  are  much  smaller  than  I  expected, 
but  I  suppose  it  is  the  proper  size.  We  find  no  fault  with  your 
manner  of  performing  any  of  our  commissions,  but  if  you  like 
to  think  yourself  remiss  in  any  of  them,  pray  do. 

I  will  now  quote  a  passage  from  Dr.  Johnson, 
which  I  imagine  to  have  conformed  pretty  closely 
to  her  notion  of  the  decorous  and  desirable  in  English 
style. 

But  biography  has  often  been  allotted  to  writers,  who  seem 
very  httle  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  their  task,  or  very 
negligent  about  the  performance.  They  rarely  afford  any  other 
account  than  might  be  collected  from  pubUck   papers,   but 


THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS  135 

imagine  themselves  writing  a  life,  when  they  exhibit  a  chron- 
ological series  of  actions  or  preferments;  and  have  so  Uttle  regard 
to  the  manners  or  behaviour  of  their  heroes,  that  more  knowledge 
may  be  gained  of  a  man's  real  character,  by  a  short  conversation 
with  one  of  his  servants,  than  from  a  formal  and  studied  narra- 
tive, begun  with  his  pedigree,  and  ended  with  his  funeral. 

There  are  indeed,  some  natural  reasons  why  these  narratives 
are  often  written  by  such  as  were  not  likely  to  give  much  in- 
struction or  dehght,  and  why  most  accounts  of  particular  persons 
are  barren  and  useless.  If  a  life  be  delayed  till  interest  and  envy 
are  at  an  end,  we  may  hope  for  impartiahty,  but  must  expect 
httle  inteUigence;  for  the  incidents  which  give  excellence  to 
biography  are  of  a  volatile  and  evanescent  kind,  such  as  soon 
escape  the  memory,  and  are  rarely  transmitted  by  tradition. 
We  know  how  few  can  pourtray  a  hving  acquaintance,  except  by 
his  most  prominent  and  observable  pecuHarities,  and  the  grosser 
features  of  his  mind;  and  it  may  be  easily  imagined  how  much 
of  this  httle  knowledge  may  be  lost  in  imparting  it,  and  how  soon 
a  succession  of  copies  will  lose  all  resemblance  to  the  original. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Jane  Austen  was 
ultimately  a  docile  person.  She  had  her  whims  and 
rebeUions  and  naughtinesses,  for  which  the  readers 
of  her  books  and  letters  are  profoundly  thankful, 
but  she  knew  the  boundaries  of  her  playground. 
She  wished  to  express  herself,  but  she  wished  to  ob- 
serve the  proprieties.  Imagine  a  cosy  New-England 
body  renting  an  Itahan  palace  and  trying  to  infuse 
into  its  large  and  desolate  rooms  a  httle  of  the  do- 
mesticity and  cheerfulness  proper  to  her  own  ideas 
of  housekeeping,  and  the  extent  of  Jane's  problem 
will  become  clear.  Or,  moving  the  simile  to  EngUsh 
soil,  her  problem  was  not  wholly  unlike  that  of  the 


136  JANE  AUSTEN 

Tilneys  in  carving  or  scooping  a  home  out  of  thje 
austerities  of  Northanger  Abbey. 

Of  course,  one  can  imagine  a  solution  that  would 
have  been  ideally  perfect.  The  formahty  might  have 
conferred  the  elegance  which  we  so  often  miss  in  the 
brisker  styles,  and  the  impulse  might  have  insured 
the  sprighthness  the  absence  of  which  has  so  often 
made,  elegance  formidable.  But  actuality  is  rarely 
so  clever  as  speculation,  and  Pride  and  Prejudice, 
for  example,  though  well  written  throughout,  does 
not  quite  sustain  the  union  of  opposite  merits  which 
marks  its  exquisite  beginning. 

It  is  a  truth  universally  acknowledged  that  a  single  man  in 
possession  of  a  good  fortune  must  be  in  want  of  a  wife. 

However  little  known  the  feelings  or  views  of  such  a  man  may 
be  on  his  first  entering  a  neighborhood,  this  truth  is  so  well  fixed 
in  the  minds  of  the  surrounding  families,  that  he  is  considered 
as  the  rightful  property  of  some  one  or  other  of  their  daughters. 

If  only  this  manner  could  have  tinged  the  whole 
book.  The  issue  would  have  been  much  the  same  as 
if  a  hvely  person,  in  a  time  of  family  mourning, 
wanting  to  wear  pink  and  bidden  to  wear  sables, 
should  have  compromised  on  lilac.  In  ]\Iiss  Austen's 
case,  however,  the  austerities  often  carry  the  day, 
as  in  the  following  account  of  a  man  whose  pompous 
diction  is  to  serve  as  a  butt  for  the  novelist's  most 
intolerant  satire. 

Mr.  Collins  was  not  a  sensible  man,  and  the  deficiency  of  na- 
ture had  been  but  little  assisted  by  education  or  society;  the 


THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS  137 

greater  part  of  his  life  having  been  spent  under  the  guidance  of 
an  illiterate  and  miserly  father;  and  though  he  belonged  to  one 
of  the  universities,  he  had  merely  kept  the  necessary  terms, 
without  forming  at  it  any  useful  acquaintance.  The  subjection 
in  which  his  father  has  brought  him  up  had  given  him  originally 
great  humility  of  manner;  but  it  was  now  a  good  deal  counter- 
acted by  the  self-conceit  of  a  weak  head,  Uving  in  retirement, 
and  the  consequential  feelings  of  early  and  unexpected  pros- 
perity. A  fortunate  chance  had  recommended  to  Lady  Cather- 
ine de  Bourgh  when  the  living  of  Hunsford  was  vacant;  and  the 
respect  he  felt  for  her  high  rank,  and  his  veneration  for  her  as  his 
patroness,  minghng  with  a  very  good  opinion  of  himself,  of  his 
authority  as  a  clergyman,  and  his  right  as  a  rector,  made  him 
altogether  a  mixture  of  pride  and  obsequiousness,  self-importance, 
and  humility. 

This  is  fighting  the  ponderous  with  its  own  weap- 
ons. In  concreteness  of  any  sort,  and  especially  in 
action,  the  style  gains  in  trimness  and  vigor.  When 
it  goes  out  for  a  walk  it  loops  up  its  skirts.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  in  the  plain  but  priceless  merits 
that  come  from  knowing  precisely  what  one  wants 
to  say  its  proficiency  is  invariable.  Jane  Austen's 
hold  on  facts  is  muscular. 

Pride  and  Prejudice  was  written,  on  the  whole, 
with  the  scrupulosity  of  a  debutante  dressing  for  her  - 
first  ball.    Even  in  this  book  passages  can  be  found 
in  which  vigilance  is  relaxed  and  facility  replaces 
neatness. 

Mr.  Darcy  was  expected  there  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks 
and  though  there  were  not  many  of  her  acquaintance  whom 
she  did  not  prefer,  his  coming  would  furnish  one  comparatively 
new  to  look  at  in  their  Rosings  parties,  and  she  might  be  amused 


138  JANE  AUSTEN 

in  seeing  how  hopeless  Miss  Bingley's  designs  on  him  were,  by 
his  behaviour  to  his  cousin,  for  whom  he  was  evidently  destined 
by  Lady  Catherine,  who  talked  of  his  coming  with  the  greatest 
satisfaction,  spoke  of  him  in  terms  of  the  highest  admiration, 
and  seemed  almost  angry  to  find  that  he  had  already  been  fre- 
quently seen  by  Miss  Lucas  and  herself. 

A  sentence  of  this  type  accommodates  particulars 
with  the  elasticity  of  a  third-rate  lodging-house. 
The  following  from  Mansfield  Park  reads  like  an  un- 
corrected college  theme: 

The  subject  of  reading  aloud  was  further  discussed.  The  two 
young  men  were  the  only  talkers,  but  they,  standing  by  the 
fire,  talked  over  the  too  common  neglect  of  the  quaUfication,  the 
total  inattention  to  it,  in  the  ordinary  school-system  for  boys,  the 
consequently  natural,  yet  in  some  instances  almost  unnatural, 
degree  of  ignorance  and  uncouthness  of  men,  when  suddenly 
called  to  the  necessity  of  reading  aloud,  which  had  fallen  within 
their  notice,  giving  instances  of  blunders,  and  failures  with  their 
secondary  causes,  the  want  of  management  of  the  voice,  of 
proper  modulation  and  emphasis,  of  foresight  and  judgment,  all 
proceeding  from  the  first  cause:  want  of  early  attention  and 
habit;  and  Fanny  was  Ustening  again  with  great  entertainment. 

Did  Miss  Austen  read  aloud  her  own  paragraphs? 
In  Mansfield  Park  a  decline  in  grace  of  style  is  evi- 
dent, and  in  Emma  the  falling-off  is  marked.  I 
quote  the  opening  of  Chapter  IV,  itahcizing  the 
phrases  which  a  lover  of  harmony  and  symmetry 
would  have  altered. 

Harriet  Smith's  intimacy  at  Hartfield  was  soon  a  settled  thing. 
Quick  and  decided  in  her  ways,  Emma  lost  no  time  in  inviting, 
encouraging  and  telling  her  to  come  very  often ;  and  as  their  ac- 


THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS  139 

quaintance  increased,  so  did  their  satisfaction  in  each  other.  As 
a  walking  companion,  Emma  had  very  early  foreseen  how  use- 
ful she  might  find  her.  In  that  respect  Mrs.  Weston's  loss  had 
been  important.  Her  father  never  went  beyond  the  shrubbery, 
where  two  divisions  of  the  ground  sufficed  him  for  his  long  walk, 
or  his  short,  as  the  year  varied;  and  since  Mrs.  Weston's  marriage 
her  exercise  had  been  too  much  confined.  She  had  ventured 
once  alone  to  Randalls  but  it  was  not  pleasant;  and  a  Harriet 
Smith,  therefore,  one  whom  she  could  summon  at  any  time  to  a 
walk,  would  be  a  valuable  addition  to  her  privileges.  But  in 
every  respect,  as  she  saw  more  of  her,  she  approved  her,  and  was 
confirmed  in  all  her  kind  designs. 

Possibly  none  of  the  errors  I  have  noted  can  be 
called  a  blemish,  but  all  of  them  are  annoyances, 
all  proofs  that  we  are  not  dealing  with  the  exigent 
styHst.  Miss  Austen  is  not  ringing  each  sentence 
on  the  counter  of  her  ear,  as  a  usurer  tests  coins 
to  make  sure  of  their  claim  to  acceptance.  The 
style  preserves  the  aspect  of  soHcitude,  but  disin- 
tegration, neither  very  rapid  nor  very  slow,  is  clearly 
visible.  The  truth  is  that  style,  like  other  delicate 
things,  is  fragile,  and  one  of  its  great  enemies  is  the 
success  of  its  possessor.  The  novice's  attention  to 
language  in  the  days  of  his  apprenticeship  is  like  the 
lover's  attention  to  dress  while  courtship  is  in  prog- 
ress. Its  aim  is  propitiation,  and  when  the  lady 
or  the  pubUc  is  won,  and  the  consent  is  ratified  by 
marriage  or  fame,  only  the  man  who  loves  dress  or 
style  for  its  own  sake  will  persevere  in  wearisome 
niceties.  Miss  Austen  was  always  an  able  or  facile 
writer  to  whom  many  neat  things  offered  themselves 


140  JANE  AUSTEN 

without  compulsion  or  entreaty;  Emma  itself  has 
no  lack  of  neat  things:  but  the  evil  of  having 
felicities  visit  you  unbidden  is  the  unwilHngness 
you  feel  to  go  in  search  of  them  when  they 
are  refractory  or  disobliging.  Miss  Austen  liked 
style  very  well,  but  I  think  she  liked  ease  and 
liked  speed,  and  the  English  in  her  last  three 
novels  is  the  mixed  result  of  these  diverging  tend- 
encies. 

Quite  apart  from  her  abounding  humor,  Miss 
Austen  had  a  talent  for  crispness  in  language  to 
which  she  was  indisposed  to  give  full  play.  I  cannot 
help  wishing  she  had  written  oftener  in  the  style  of 
the  following  characterization  of  ^Mrs.  Bennet:  ''She 
was  a  woman  of  mean  understanding,  Uttle  informa- 
tion, and  uncertain  temper.  When  she  was  dis- 
contented, she  fancied  herself  nervous.  The  business 
of  her  hfe  was  to  get  her  daughters  married;  its 
solace  was  visiting  and  news."  I  sometimes  fancy 
that  Miss  Austen's  style  would  have  profited  by  the 
adjournment  of  her  date  of  birth  by  fifty  or  seventy- 
five  years.  A  clever  woman  can  always  get  a  great 
deal  of  her  own  way  in  the  teeth  of  the  social  re- 
strictions and  hterary  habits  to  which  she  feels  bound 
to  defer,  but  always  less  than  she  might  have  had 
under  a  system  that  favored  hberty.  Diana  of  the 
Crossways  would  have  been  a  completer  woman  hi 
1900  than  in  1800,  and  Jane  Austen's  style  miglit 
have  been  bettered  not  so  much  by  the  instruction  as 


THE   GROUP  OF  NOVELS  141 

by  the  countenance  of  the  fashions  exemplified  in 
Macaulay  and  Thackeray. 

Jane  Austen's  diction  is  of  a  lustrous  purity,  and 
her  grammar  is  normally  sound.  It  is  a  natural 
grammar,  flowing  like  a  spring  out  of  the  soil  of  her 
native  Kent,  not  let  in  by  pedagogic  irrigation.  In 
that  test  point  of  EngUsh,  the  discrimination  of 
''shall"  and  ''will,"  her  usage  has  a  boldness  and  a 
precision  that  in  itself  must  have  recommended  her 
work  to  the  esteem  of  Macaulay.  She  is  perfectly 
secure  in  the  remotest  of  its  intricacies,  and  I  could 
half  wish  that  the  young  barbarians  all  at  play  in 
our  American  colleges  could  be  enjoined  to  read  her 
Letters  through  with  pointed  reference  to  her  virtuos- 
ity in  this  particular.  On  the  other  hand,  a  grammar 
which  has  the  grace  and  fortune  to  be  untaught  has 
the  drawback  of  being  uncritical,  and  certain  loose- 
nesses, which  no  doubt  prevailed  in  her  circle,  fairly 
rioted  in  her  letters  and  novels.  The  slovenly  use  of 
the  plural  pronouns,  "they,"  "their,"  and  "them," 
in  dependence  on  the  singular  antecedents,  "every- 
body," "every  one,"  "each,"  and  the  hke,  is  unceas- 
ing, and  appears  even  where  the  avoidance  of  confu- 
sion between  the  sexes  cannot  possibly  be  advanced 
as  an  excuse.  Miss  Austen  not  only  writes:  "Every- 
body was  pleased  to  think  how  much  they  had  al- 
ways dishked  Mr.  Darcy,"  but,  in  relation  to  two 
women:  "Each  felt  for  the  other,  and  of  course  for 
themselves."    Of  course  this  is  no  worse  than  Lyly's: 


142  JANE  AUSTEN 

"Each  Fury  skips  and  flings  into  her  lap  their  whips" 
or  Galsworthy's:  ''Each  of  these  ladies  held  fans  in 
their  hands,"  but  the  original  sin  in  the  usage  is 
not  expiated  by  the  gentihty  of  its  sponsors.  IVIiss 
Austen  is  also  overfond  of  that  scarcely  incorrect 
but  highly  inelegant  use  of  the  relative  "which" 
which  makes  it  subtend,  not  a  noun  or  pronoun, 
but  a  clause.  "Mr.  Hinton  is  expected  home  soon, 
which  is  a  good  thing  for  the  shirts."  She  has  a 
fashion  of  using  the  subjunctive  "were"  in  place 
of  the  indicative  "was"  in  contexts  where  the  former 
is  unsupported  by  any  precedent,  either  in  speech 
or  Hterature,  which  I  succeed  in  recalling.  She 
writes:  ''Imputing  his  visit  to  a  wish  of  hearing  that 
she  were  better";  "Before  her  answer  were  sent"; 
"And  that  Serle  and  the  butler  should  see  that  every- 
thing were  safe  in  the  house."  In  the  invahd,  not 
to  say  the  moribund,  Enghsh  subjunctive,  such 
aggressiveness  is  pecuharly  surprising. 

I  have  Uttle  heart  for  the  criticism  of  those  dis- 
carded or  unfinished  works  which  the  zeal  of  friends  * 
— often  as  much  to  be  dreaded  as  the  mahce  of 
enemies — extracts  from  the  cabinets  of  dead  au- 
thors, and  bares  to  the  vain  curiosity  of  an  idle 
world.  I  presume,  however,  that  I  should  be  held 
critically  remiss,  if  I  failed  to  say  a  word  on  the  early 
but  undated  Lady  Susan  and  the  maturer  but  un- 

*  In  justice  to  Mr.  J.  E.  Austen  Leip;h,  who  fjave  Lady  StAsan 
to  tho  world,  it  may  be  said  that  he  yielded  reluctantly  to  repeated 
solicitations.     I  honor  his  reluctance  and  regret  its  futility. 


THE  GROUP  OF  NOVELS  143 

revised  and  unfinished  Watsons.  Lady  Susan  is 
the  story,  in  forty-one  short  letters,  of  the  machina- 
tions of  a  Balzackian  woman,  a  woman  not  only  im- 
principled,  but  bad-hearted  and  cold-blooded,  who 
has  a  place  and  technical  standing  in  fashionable 
Enghsh  society  and  in  a  distrustful,  but  accom- 
modating, family  circle.  If  the  treatment  is  weak  in 
its  entire  absence  of  gusto,  it  is  respectable  in  its 
total  reUnquishment  of  the  levity  of  melodrama. 
Lady  Susan  herself  is  no  bugaboo,  but  a  study,  and 
while  it  cannot  be  classed  as  a  strong  study,  the  cool 
resolve  which  is  its  main  ingredient  distinguishes  it 
sharply  from  the  juvenile  and  the  commonplace. 
The  book  is  arctic  perhaps  in  a  sense,  but  it  shows 
the  firmness  no  less  than  the  rigidity  of  frost.  Pos- 
sibly the  most  promising  trait  in  the  book  is  an  ar- 
tistic severity,  which  is  strong  enough  to  hold  even 
the  moral  severity  in  check.  The  book  is  quite  cor- 
rect in  its  awards  of  praise  and  rebuke,  but  it  de- 
clines to  excite  itself  over  the  fact  of  disapproval. 

The  fragmentary  Watsons,  though  much  better 
than  Lady  Susan,  calls  for  less  conament,  because 
it  deals  with  Miss  Austen's  habitual  material,  as- 
sembhes,  visits,  gossip,  and  flirtations,  in  a  swifter 
and  sketchier  form  of  the  customary  Austen  manner. 
The  treatment,  both  of  character  and  incident,  is  a 
little  lean,  but  the  narrative  shows  a  lightness  and 
speed  which  I  doubt  if  it  always  reaches  in  finished 
works  where  it  has  the  weight  of  style  to  carry. 


PART  II 
THE  REALIST 


CHAPTER   VIII 
THE  REALIST 

I  MUST  treat  with  some  fulness  Miss  Austen's 
general  method  in  character-drawing,  because  her 
truth  to  life  is  mainly  exhibited  in  her  portraits, 
and  the  correction  of  certain  common  misapprehen- 
sions as  to  the  nature  and  extent  of  her  truth  to 
life  is  the  main  purpose  of  this  book.  The  cahn  re- 
mark of  her  grand-nephew  that  she  describes  men  and 
women  exactly  as  men  and  women  really  are  would 
perhaps  be  accepted  without  dissent  or  qualification 
by  the  majority  of  trustworthy  judges;  but,  waiving 
for  the  moment  all  question  as  to  the  narrowness 
of  her  field,  which,  as  the  image  and  measure  of  the 
narrowness  of  her  life,  was  an  attestation  of  her 
reahsm,  I  beheve  that  even  within  that  field  her  ac- 
curacy is  subject  to  two  great  deductions — a  deduc- 
tion on  the  score  of  decoration  or  convention  and  an- 
other on  the  score  of  extravagance  or  hyperbole. 
In  both  these  poiuts  I  beheve  her  to  have  been  the 
child  and  inheritor  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as 
in  her  faithfulness  to  truth  Lq  other  matters  she  was 
the  forerunner  and  in  part  the  parent  of  the  nine- 
teenth and  the  twentieth. 

The  eighteenth  century  was  a  curious  mingling  of 

147 


148  JANE  AUSTEN 

the  courtly  and  the  brutah  It  was  an  age  in  which  a 
clergyman  like  Sterne  could  write  like  a  rake,  and 
in  which  a  rogue  like  Defoe  could  write  like  an  evan- 
geUst;  an  age  in  which  a  rough  rider  like  Smollett,  a 
vagabond  hke  Goldsmith,  and  a  prodigal  like  Sheri- 
dan could  practice  and  to  all  appearances  rehsh  a 
stately  and  decorous  diction  framed  in  ceremonious 
and  rotund  periods.  In  the  ancient  Indian  dramas 
the  aristocrats  spoke  Sanskrit,  while  the  inferior 
characters  contented  themselves  with  a  vulgar 
dialect  known  as  Prakrit.  Now  the  eighteenth- 
century  dramatists  and  novelists  had  a  homespun 
speech  for  everyday  people,  while  they  contrived  a 
formal  Sanskrit  for  the  use  of  their  high-bom  and 
high-bred  characters.  The  convention  is  not  limited 
to  language,  but  language  is  one  of  its  plamest  and 
most  notable  manifestations  and  is  a  point  of  dis- 
tinct value  for  the  criticism  of  Miss  Austen.  There 
is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  Fielding,  Smollett, 
Richardson,  Johnson,  and  Mrs.  RadcUffe  bequeathed 
their  stilts  to  her,  and  there  is  every  evidence  that 
she  was  proud  and  happy  in  the  legacy. 

Let  us  see  how  her  people  talk  in  an  early  novel, 
Sense  and  Sensibility. 

"Whoever  may  have  been  so  detestably  your  enemy,  let  them 
be  cheated  of  their  malignant  triumph,  my  dear  sister,  by  see- 
ing how  nobly  the  consciousness  of  your  own  innocence  and 
good  intentions  supports  your  spirits.  It  is  a  reasonable  and 
laudable  pride  which  resists  such  malevolence." 


THE  REALISTS  149 

Is  this  the  exuberance  of  youth  which  maturity 
will  prune?  Let  us  try  Jane  Austen  by  a  novel 
finished  after  forty.  Anne  has  just  told  Mr.  Elliot 
that  she  is  a  very  poor  Italian  scholar. 

"  Yes,  yes,  I  see  you  are.  I  see  you  know  nothing  of  the  matter. 
You  have  only  knowledge  enough  of  the  language  to  translate 
at  sight  these  inverted,  transposed,  curtailed  ItaUan  lines  into 
clear,  comprehensible,  elegant  EngUsh.  You  need  not  say 
anything  more  of  your  ignorance.    Here  is  complete  proof." 

"  I  will  not  oppose  such  kind  poUteness;  but  I  should  be  sorry  to 
be  examined  by  a  real  proficient." 

How  does  a  Hvely  girl  talk  to  the  father  from  whom 
she  has  inherited  her  own  racy  humor?  These  are 
the  words  of  Ehzabeth  Bennet: 

It  is  not  of  peculiar,  but  of  general  evils,  which  *  I  am  now 
complaining.  Our  importance,  our  respectability  in  the  world 
must  be  affected  by  the  wild  volatiUty,  the  assurance  and  disdain 
of  all  restraint  which  mark  Lydia's  character.  Excuse  me, — for 
I  must  speak  plainly.  If  you,  my  dear  father,  will  not  take  the 
trouble  of  checking  her  exuberant  spirits,  and  of  teaching  her 
that  her  present  pursuits  are  not  to  be  the  business  of  her  life, 
she  will  soon  be  beyond  the  reach  of  amendment.  Her  character 
will  be  fixed,  and  she  will,  at  sixteen,  be  the  most  determined 
flirt  that  ever  made  herself  and  her  family  ridiculous; — a  flirt, 
too,  in  the  worst  and  meanest  degree  of  flirtation;  without  any 
attraction  beyond  youth  and  a  tolerable  person;  and,  from  the 
ignorance  and  emptiness  of  her  mind,  wholly  unable  to  ward  off 
any  portion  of  that  universal  contempt  which  her  rage  for 
admiration  will  excite.  In  this  danger  Kitty  is  also  compre- 
hended. She  wiU  follow  wherever  Lydia  leads.  Vain,  ignorant, 
idle,  and  absolutely  uncontrolled. 

*  Observe  the  curious  substitution  of  "  which  "  for  "  that." 


150  JANE  AUSTEN 

The  extreme  censure  that  I  can  pass  upon  this 
specimen  of  conversation  is  that  it  would  have  been 
approved  by  the  author  of  Pamela  and  extolled  as 
superlative  by  the  author  of  Rasselas.  "In  this 
danger  Kitty  is  also  comprehended."  The  diction 
is  senatorial.  But  Miss  Austen  does  not  stop  at 
pomp.  She  of  all  persons  must  traffic  in  romantic 
melancholy.  The  following  hues  are  not  engraved 
upon  a  tombstone;  they  are  part  of  Anne  EUiot's 
speech  to  a  mere  acquaintance:  "All  the  privilege 
I  claim  for  my  own  sex  (it  is  not  a  very  enviable 
one:  you  need  not  covet  it)  is  that  of  loving  longest, 
when  existence  or  when  hope  is  gone."  This  de- 
cides the  eavesdropping  Captain  Wentworth;  it 
would  have  decided  me.  Even  that  acme  of 
affected  elegance,  the  use  of  the  third  person  for 
the  second,  is  not  spared  us.  Captain  Wentworth 
is  talking  to  Louisa  Musgrove:  "If  Louisa  Mus- 
grove  would  be  beautiful  and  happy  in  her  Novem- 
ber of  hfe,  she  will  cherish  all  her  present  powers 
of  mind."  German  romanticism  could  hardly  go 
further. 

Do  all  of  Miss  Austen's  characters  talk  in  periods? 
By  no  means.  If  a  character  is  ill-bred,  or,  if  he  is 
comic  or  fatuous,  he  is  allowed  to  talk  in  a  vivid 
and  natural  way.  The  reader  of  Jane  Austen — even 
the  educated  reader — is  under  the  constant  humiha- 
tion  of  seeing  the  English  which  he  himself  talks 
appropriated   to   the  fools  and  grotesques  in  her 


THE  REALISTS  151 

novels.  The  grace  of  naturalness  is  permitted  only 
to  the  under-bred.  Miss  Austen  was  too  clearheaded 
to  imagine  that  she  was  drawing  Hfe  in  the  lofty- 
diction  of  her  favored  characters;  that  diction  was 
merely  her  way,  as  it  was  her  century's  way,  of 
letting  the  reader  know  that  the  persons  so  express- 
ing themselves  were  ladies  and  gentlemen.  It  was 
a  most  arbitrary,  circuitous,  and  cumbersome  way 
of  imparting  the  fact,  and  reflected  pointedly,  if  not 
quite  fairly,  on  the  genuineness  of  a  breeding  which 
had  to  be  identified  by  a  fabrication.  A  dictum 
which  I  reserve  the  right  to  amend  by  an  important 
deduction  later  on  may  be  stated  provisionally 
in  this  form:  From  one  large  field  of  truth  Jane 
Austen  was  debarred  by  her  conformity  to  the  pre- 
scriptions of  her  age.  For  her,  distinctions  of  rank 
were  capital,  and  since  dress,  the  ordinary  badge 
of  people  of  rank,  could  not  be  transported  into 
literature,  she  turned  their  speech  into  costume. 
The  plays  and  novels  of  men  hke  Galsworthy  had 
not  yet  taught  the  world  that  refinement  and  dis- 
tinction might  find  in  simphcity  not  a  peril  but  a 
safeguard.  The  athlete  can  afford  to  strip  himself, 
and  the  true  gentleman  does  not  fear  to  lay  aside 
pomp. 

It  may  be  said  that  I  am  going  too  fast,  that  a 
century  which  made  fine  language  the  convention 
of  gentihty  in  Hterature  might  make  it  the  conven- 
tion of  gentihty  in  life,  that  the  condemnation  of 


152  JANE  AUSTEN 

Jane  Austen  by  the  living  critic  is  the  condemnation 
of  the  eye-witness  by  the  absentee.  I  admit  IMiss 
Austen's  authority,  and  to  that  authority  I  will 
appeal.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  on  normal 
occasions  she  heard  any  better  English  than  she 
spoke,  and  it  is  equally  impossible  to  believe  that 
she  spoke  any  better  EngHsh — in  the  sense  of  finer 
or  comelier  English — than  she  wrote  in  her  letters. 
I  will  take  a  passage  from  the  very  first  page  on 
which  I  light  in  opening  the  Letters  at  random. 
Whatever  elegance  or  intricacy  is  superadded  to 
this  in  the  conversation  of  her  high-bred  characters 
is  clearly  superadded  to  nature. 

The  Evelyns  returned  our  visit  on  Saturday;  we  were  very 
happy  to  meet,  and  all  that;  they  are  going  to-morrow  into 
Gloucestershire  to  the  Dolphins  for  ten  days.  Our  acquaintance, 
Mr.  Woodward,  is  just  married  to  a  Miss  Rowe,  a  young  lady 
rich  in  money  and  music. 

I  thank  you  for  your  Sunday's  letter,  it  is  very  long  and  very 
agreeable.  I  fancy  you  know  more  particulars  of  our  sale  than 
we  do;  we  have  heard  the  price  of  nothing  but  the  cows,  bacon, 
hay,  hops,  tables,  and  my  father's  chest  of  drawers  and  study 
table.  Mary  is  more  minute  in  her  account  of  their  own  gains 
than  in  ours;  probably  being  better  informed  in  them.  I  will 
attend  to  Mrs.  Lloyd's  commission  and  to  her  abhorrence  of 
musk  when  I  write  again. 

What  is  the  effect  of  this  limitation  on  Miss  Aus- 
ten's delineation  of  character?  Naturally,  the  dis- 
advantage, the  incumbrance,  is  very  great.  But 
the  elasticity  of  Miss  Austen's  rebound  from  the 
stringencies  of  this  compression  is  as  noteworthy 


THE  REALISTS  153 

as  the  compression  itself.  Beyle  once  said  that  the 
ingenuities  and  resourcefulness  of  the  classic  French 
drama  reminded  him  of  the  nimbleness  of  a  person 
dancing  in  chains.  Miss  Austen  certainly  danced 
in  chains,  but  the  agihty  with  which  she  moved 
within  the  restriction  was  marvellous.  The  effect 
of  a  imiform  parlance  is  to  slur  distinctions  and  the 
tendency  of  a  formal  diction  is  to  crush  vivacity. 
It  was  highly  fortunate  for  Miss  Austen's  self- 
extrication  from  these  difficulties  that  her  discrimi- 
nation in  characters  was  extraordinary,  and  that  in 
drawing  character  animation  was  her  strong  point. 
Observe  the  resihence  of  her  faculty  in  the  load  it 
shoulders  in  the  manipulation  of  a  passage  like  the 
following: 

"I  see  what  you  think  of  me,"  said  he,  gravely;  "I  shaU  make 
but  a  poor  figure  in  your  journal  to-morrow." 

"My  journal." 

"Yes;  I  know  exactly  what  you  will  say.  Friday,  went  to  the 
Lower  Rooms;  wore  my  sprigged  muslin  robe  with  blue  trim- 
mings, plain  black  shoes;  appeared  to  much  advantage,  but  was 
strangely  harassed  by  a  queer  half-witted  man,  who  would  make 
me  dance  with  him,  and  distressed  me  by  his  nonsense." 

"Indeed,  I  shall  say  no  such  thing." 

"Shall  I  tell  you  what  you  ought  to  say?" 

"If  you  please." 

"I  danced  with  a  very  agreeable  young  man,  introduced  by 
Mr.  King;  had  a  great  deal  of  conversation  with  him;  seems  a 
most  extraordinary  genius,  hope  I  may  know  more  of  him.  Thaty 
madam,  is  what  I  wish  you  to  say." 

"But  perhaps  I  keep  no  journal." 

"Perhaps  you  are  not  sitting  in  this  room,  and  I  am  not  sitting 


154  JANE  AUSTEN 

by  you.  These  are  points  in  which  a  doubt  is  equally  possible. 
Not  keep  a  journal!  How  are  your  absent  cousins  to  understand 
the  tenour  of  your  life  in  Bath  without  one?  How  are  the  civil- 
ities and  compliments  of  every  day  to  be  related  as  they  ought 
to  be  unless  noted  down  every  evening  in  a  journal?  How  are 
your  various  dresses  to  be  remembered  and  the  particular  state 
of  your  complexion,  and  curl  of  your  hair  to  be  described,  in  all 
their  diversities,  without  having  constant  recourse  to  a  journal? 
My  dear  madam,  I  am  not  so  ignorant  of  young  ladies'  ways  as 
you  wish  to  believe  me.  It  is  this  deUghtful  habit  of  journalizing 
which  largely  contributes  to  form  the  easy  style  of  writing  for 
which  ladies  are  so  generally  celebrated.  Everybody  allows  that 
the  talent  of  writing  agreeable  letters  is  pecuharly  female.  Na- 
ture may  have  done  something,  but  I  am  sure  it  must  be  essen- 
tially assisted  by  the  practice  of  keeping  a  journal." 

"I  have  sometimes  thought,"  said  Catherine,  doubtingly/ 
"whether  ladies  do  write  so  much  better  letters  than  gentlemen. i 
That  is,  I  should  not  think  the  superiority  was  always  on  our 
side." 

"As  far  as  I  have  had  opportunity  of  judging,  it  appears  to 
me  that  the  usual  style  of  letter-writing  among  women  is  fault- 
less, except  in  three  particulars." 

"And  what  are  they?" 

"  A  general  deficiency  of  subject,  a  total  inattention  to 
stops,  and  a  very  frequent  ignorance  of  grammar." 

Observe  that  Mr.  Tilney's  style  is  as  much  heavier 
than  Catherine's  in  mass  as  it  is  hghter  in  movement. 
His  syntax  at  a  ball  outweighs  that  of  many  clergy- 
men in  the  pulpit;  but  the  more  Jane  Austen  thick- 
ened her  dough,  the  more  she  poured  in  her  yeast, 
and  the  struggle  between  levity  and  gravity  is 
exhilarating.  Miss  Austen  both  loses  and  profits 
by  the  test.  In  the  absence  of  the  load,  the  actual 
result  might  have  been  greater,  but  the  demonstra- 


THE  REALISTS  155 

tion  of  capacity  would  have  been  less.  Of  course  the 
relatively  happy  issue  is  confined  to  the  liveher 
characters;  the  solemn  persons  founder  in  their  own 
verbosity. 

There  is  another  quahty  in  Miss  Austen's  por- 
trayal of  life,  for  which,  as  I  strongly  suspect,  she 
was  not  indebted  to  her  faculty  of  observation.  I 
have  in  mind  the  judiciousness  which  it  is  the  pride 
and  dehght  of  nearly  every  person  to  exhibit  in  his 
kind  and  degree.  I  do  not  mean  simply  judgment; 
judgment  is  the  underpinning  of  civihzation,  and  its 
distribution  in  moderate  amounts  is  fairly  universal. 
What  is  pecuHar  in  Miss  Austen  is  the  pomp  and 
gusto  with  which  this  judicial  faculty  is  exercised. 
The  persons  affect  us  like  bureaux;  they  make  a 
vocation  of  foresight;  they  pose  as  experts  in  life. 
The  quahty  or  its  imitation  is  more  or  less  pervasive. 
The  starch  is  evident  not  only  in  Sir  Thomas  Ber- 
tram, where  its  accumulation  is  pardonable,  but  in 
his  young  son  Edmund ;  even  in  Fanny  Price,  where 
much  of  the  starch,  under  a  well-known  chemical 
analogy,  has  undergone  a  conversion  into  sugar,  its 
aroma  is  unmistakable.  I  can  hear  the  intonation  of 
casuistry  even  in  the  frou-frou  of  Mrs.  Elton's 
frivolous  and  vapid  speech.  If  I  hold  my  hand  to  my 
ear,  I  fancy  I  can  even  catch  its  attenuated  echoes 
in  the  clatter  and  jingle  of  the  scatter-brained 
Isabella  Thorpe.  Let  any  one  compare  these  two 
yoimg  women  with  what  a  fribble  and  a  flirt  would 


156  JANE  AUSTEN 

have  been  a  hundred  years  earher  in  Dryden  or 
Etherege  or  a  half-century  later  in  Dickens  or 
Thackeray,  and  he  will  be  struck  by  the  largeness  of 
the  difference.  As  in  a  theocratic  organization  the 
very  scoundrels  are  pietists,  so  in  the  Jane  Austen 
world  the  very  fools  are  wiseacres.  It  must  not  be 
supposed  that  the  amount  of  wisdom  even  in  the 
exploited  and  favored  characters  bears  any  propor- 
tion to  the  amount  of  flourish  with  which  the  wisdom 
is  set  forth.  The  sense  is  sense  for  the  most  part, 
but  its  limitations  both  in  depth  and  breadth  are 
notable. 

This  attitude  as  the  habit  of  a  commmiity  is 
imknown  to  me  in  actual  Ufe.  The  responsibility 
with  which  two  young  girls  in  the  security  of  isola- 
tion discuss  the  conduct  of  Hfe  is  received  with  mis- 
giving by  a  critic  whose  acquaintance  with  that 
species  has  been  formed  in  America.  No  doubt  the 
vanity  of  discretion  is  quite  imaginable  as  a  social 
formula,  however  thoroughly  in  one's  own  time  and 
place  it  has  been  supplanted  by  the  vanity  of  smart- 
ness. The  Uterature  of  the  age  seems  at  first  blush 
emphatic  in  Miss  Austen's  support.  From  Pope's 
sense  in  the  early  seventeen  hundreds  to  Words- 
worth's solemnities  in  the  early  eighteen  hundreds, 
the  art  of  behaving  "Hke  one  well  studied  in  a  sad 
ostent  to  please  his  grandam"  was  practiced  by  the 
sages  and  professed  by  the  madcaps  of  literature. 
Goldsmith's  Good-N aiured  Man  is  a  case  in  point. 


THE  REALISTS  157 

Here  the  ripe  baronet,  Sir  William  Honeywood,  is 
entitled  by  age  and  rank  to  the  treasures  of  wisdom 
he  exhibits,  but  the  key  to  his  intellectual  coffers  has 
clearly  been  filched  by  his  prodigal  nephew,  who  is 
all  acuteness  and  discretion  in  the  pursuit  of  thought- 
lessness and  extravagance.  The  young  lady  of  the 
play,  Miss  Richland,  might  have  chaperoned  her 
own  grandmother. 

But  this  unanimity  of  Hterature  is  capable  of  two 
interpretations.  Indeed,  hterature  is  a  witness 
whose  veracity  is  already  discredited.  That  any 
young  girl  should  talk — to  go  back,  for  an  instant,  to 
the  previous  point — as  Ehzabeth  Bennet  talked  in 
the  passage  just  quoted  on  page  149  is  not  only 
beyond  the  credible;  it  is  beyond  all  temperance  and 
decency  in  the  incredible.  Yet  it  is  not  so  very  much 
worse  than  the  customary  genteel  speech  of  htera- 
ture in  its  time.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  hterature 
that  lyingly  affirmed  that  birth  in  a  good  family  and 
education  at  Eton  and  Oxford  conferred  the  gift  of 
talking  like  a  book  should  not  lyingly  affirm  its 
power  to  install  its  protege  in  what  might  be  defined 
as  a  professorship  of  good  sense.  All  this  is  somewhat 
speculative,  and  the  main  reason  for  my  skepticism — 
a  skepticism  into  which  I  am  not  anxious  to  urge  the 
reluctant  or  hesitating  reader — is  drawn  once  more 
from  the  correspondence  of  Miss  Austen.  In  Jane 
Austen's  letters  good  sense  is  never  out  of  the  way, 
but  it  is  seldom  to  the  fore,  and  never  goes  out  for  an 


158  JANE  AUSTEN 

airing.  With  her  heroes  and  heroines  it  is  always 
driving  through  the  country  in  a  barouche-landau. 
These  people  are  serious  in  fact,  and  still  more 
serious  in  theory.  With  Miss  Austen  herself,  as  with 
most  sensible  people  in  our  time,  precisely  the  re- 
verse is  the  case. 

An  example  will  clarify  the  point.  Miss  Austen's 
niece,  Fanny  Knight,  wants  advice  as  to  an 
offer  of  marriage.  For  a  spinster  of  thirty-nine 
the  occasion  was  priceless.  Here  was  a  chance 
for  "My  dear  Fanny's"  ad  nauseam  (there  are 
plenty  of  "My  dear  Fanny's"  in  Mansfield  Park — 
three  on  four  pages)  for  the  parade  of  experience, 
the  mouthing  and  mummery  of  good  sense.  Of  all 
this  not  a  vestige  is  discoverable.  Jane's  letters 
are  easy  and  unpretending;  they  are  vivacious;  they 
are  even  jolly.  At  the  same  time  they  abound  in  care 
for  Fanny  and  for  Fanny's  welfare.  Even  the  graver 
letters  are  not  unduly  grave;  the  grief  is  not  smoth- 
ered in  bombazine.  Jane  Austen  may  have  been  an 
exception  among  her  family  and  circle,  but  on  this 
point  I  am  disposed  to  trust  the  letter-writer  and 
impugn  the  novehst.  I  beUeve  that  the  pragmatism 
of  her  fictions  was  a  bid  for  respect,  or,  what  is  al- 
most the  same  thing,  an  obeisance  to  respectabiUty. 
When  Martha  Lloyd  wanted  Jane  to  buy  a  pair  of 
shoes  for  her  in  Bath,  Jane's  reluctance  was  marked, 
and  she  adds  to  her  protest  the  emphatic  words: 
"At  any  rate  they  shall  all  have  flat  heels."     No 


THE  REALISTS  159 

wonder  she  refused  high  heels  to  Martha;  she  was 
too  busy  in  providing  them  for  the  characters  in  her 
novels. 

On  Miss  Austen's  realism  in  this  point  my  mind  is 
still  open,  but  there  is  another  matter  on  which  my 
convictions  are  immovable.  In  my  review  of  in- 
dividual characters  in  the  several  books  I  have  often 
pointed  out  the  fact  of  overcharge.  I  now  wish  to 
declare  my  belief  that  in  the  comic  figures,  which 
include  so  many  of  Miss  Austen's  hvehest  and  most 
famous  characters,  the  rule  is  overcharge.  Miss 
Austen  was  capable,  as  few  writers  have  been  ca- 
pable, of  shaded  portraiture,  and  this  fact  in  combina- 
tion with  the  mildness  of  her  plots  and  her  pose  as 
schoolmistress  has  obscured  the  cardinal  fact  that  a 
large  part  of  her  best  and  best  loved  characterization 
is  the  untempered  and  strident  characterization  of 
comedy,  the  comedy  of  Mohere,  Sheridan,  and  Gold- 
smith. Macaulay,  in  a  famous  passage,  thus  exposes 
the  garishness  of  Fanny  Bumey  in  contrast  with  the 
chastened  half-hghts  of  Jane  Austen. 

In  Cecilia,  for  example,  Mr.  Delvile  never  opens  his  lips  with- 
out some  illusion  to  his  own  birth  and  station;  or  Mr.  Briggs, 
without  some  allusion  to  the  hoarding  of  money;  or  Mr.  Hobson, 
without  betraying  the  self-indulgence  and  self-importance  of  a 
purseproud  upstart;  or  Mr.  Simkins,  without  uttering  some 
sneaking  remark  for  the  purpose  of  currying  favor  with  his 
customers;  or  Mr.  Meadows,  without  expressing  apathy  and 
weariness  of  life;  or  Mr.  Albany,  without  declaiming  about  the 
vices  of  the  rich  and  the  misery  of  the  poor;  or  Mrs.  Belfield, 


160  JANE  AUSTEN 

without  some  indelicate  eulogy  on  her  son;  or  Lady  Margaret, 
without  indicating  jealousy  of  her  husband.  Morrice  is  all 
skipping,  oflficious  impertinence,  Mr.  Gosport  all  sarcasm,  Lady 
Honoria  all  lively  prattle,  Miss  LaroUes  all  silly  prattle. 

Now  I  intend  to  furnish  a  parallel  to  this  passage 
from  the  sinless  and  adorable  Miss  Austen;  and  if  I 
draw  my  examples  from  two  novels  instead  of  one,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Miss  Bumey's  novels  are 
longer  and  more  thickly  peopled  than  Miss  Austen's. 
Here  is  my  effort.  Mrs.  Jennings  never  opens  her 
mouth  without  some  low-bred  allusion  to  courtship; 
nor  Mrs.  Palmer  without  some  outgush  of  imbecile 
good-nature;  nor  Mr.  Palmer  without  some  laconic 
insult;  nor  Fanny  Dash  wood  without  the  use  of  some 
mercenary  manoeuvre;  nor  Lucy  Steele  without 
some  fawning  and  maUcious  calculation;  nor  Sir 
John  Middleton  without  some  display  of  gregarious 
joviaUty;  nor  Robert  Ferrars  without  some  betrayal 
of  supercilious  conceit;  nor  Mr.  Bennet  without  some 
cynical  pleasantry;  nor  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh 
without  some  overbearing  or  interfering  remark. 
Mrs.  Bennet  is  all  addleheaded  \^'orldliness,  Lydia 
Bennet  all  boisterous  levity,  Mary  Bennet  all 
pompous  verbosity,  Georgiana  Darcy  all  fluttered 
reticence.  Of  course  these  assertions  are  not  literally 
true,  but  they  are  satisfyingly  near  to  truth,  and  a 
satisfying  nearness  is  quite  as  much  as  IMacaulay  at- 
tains in  his  indictment  of  the  uniformities  of  Famiy 
Bumey.    Strange  as  it  may  appear,  in  this  section 


THE  REALISTS  161 

of  her  field,  Miss  Austen  is  to  be  reckoned  among 
dashing  and  reckless  artists,  the  artists  who  draw 
character  as  they  drive  nails  by  pounding  with  all 
their  might  upon  one  spot. 

This  is  part  of  the  truth — the  neglected  part;  the 
other  part  is  the  fact  that  in  another  group  of  char- 
acters she  is  mistress,  as  perhaps  no  other  artist  in 
our  literature  has  been  mistress,  of  the  restrained, 
the  shaded,  the  impalpable.  Macaulay's  picture 
of  her  four  young  clergymen  who  are  all  alike  and  al^ 
unlike,  though  pressed  rather  far  in  certain  phrases,^ 
is  just  in  its  main  contention.  It  is  easy  to  handle  a^ 
character  with  handles;  Miss  Austen  can  dispensf-* 
with  that  convenience.  Put  the  neutral  charactei^ 
beside  the  strongly  marked,  put  Charlotte  Collins 
beside  her  husband,  put  Kitty  Bennet  beside  Lydia 
or  Mary,  put  Charles  Musgrove  beside  his  wife,  and 
you  feel  that  in  Miss  Austen's  palette  the  drabs  are  as 
significant  as  the  purples.  The  milder  figures  on 
Miss  Austen's  canvas  are  finer  and  abler — I  do  not 
say  stronger  or  even  more  valuable — than  the  out- 
standing ones,  in  much  the  same  way  that  Seth  Bede 
is  a  greater  achievement  than  Adam,  that  Mrs.  Tul- 
Uver  is  the  solution  of  a  greater  difficulty  than 
Mrs.  Glegg.  How  Miss  Austen,  in  whose  temper, 
method,  and  style  there  is  no  shading,  manages  to 
get  shade  into  her  characters  is  a  problem  that  I 
cannot  solve;  it  is  an  instance  of  squaring  the  circle, 
or  rather  of  rounding  the  square,  the  secret  of  which 


V 


162  JANE  AUSTEN 

I  do  not  pretend  to  fathom.    Miss  Austen  is  prone 

to  spend  the  delicacies  of  her  workmanship  on  cheap 

materials,  cheap,  I  hasten  to  explain,  by  the  test  of 

intellectual  and  moral  values.    As  I  have  hinted,  she 

rarely  combines  her  most  dehcate  and  her  most 

spirited  work  in  the  same  portrait.    I  think,  however, 

that  it  is  quite  possible  to  name  a  character  who  is  as 

finely  edged  as  any  of  her  neuters  and  as  vital,  if  not 

l.^uite  so  vivid,  as  the  most  glaring  of  her  exaggera- 

lions.    That  character  is  Emma  Woodhouse. 

n    Is  this  finer  discrimination  the  result  of  complex- 

r,ty?    Are  Miss  Austen's  figures  complex?    At  this 

gooint  it  behooves  us  to  distinguish.    There  is  some- 

•  thing  elusive  in  Miss  Austen's  presentations,  and  it  is 

always  possible  that  a  property  which  we  cannot 

name  may  have  its  source  in  an  invisible  complexity. 

But  if  complexity  refers  to  ascertainable  traits — 

traits  which  may  be  named  and  reached  by  a  process 

of  critical  decomposition — I  am  disposed  to  think 

that  Miss  Austen  surpasses  all  other  novehsts  in  the 

fewness  of  the  traits  out  of  which  her  persons  are 

moulded.    Take  two  of  the  young  divines  in  whose 

diversification  Macaulay  exulted.    What  is  there  in 

Edward  Ferrars  but  affection  and  diffidence?    What 

trait  can  Henry  Tihiey  boast  of  but  winsomeness  in 

raillery?    After  he  has  mocked  daintily  at  Catherine 

two  or  three  times,  Henry  is  drained  of  significance. 

In  my  reviews  of  individual  portraits  I  have  noted 

the  fact  that  the  tune  or  ah-  of  a  character  is  some- 


THE  REALISTS  163 

times  conveyed  to  us  entire  in  the  first  few  notes,  and 
that  da  capo  might  fittingly  stand  for  the  remainder 
of  the  score.  I  have  also  noted  Miss  Austen's 
marvellous  capacity  for  bestowing  at  least  a  spec- 
trum of  individuahty  on  characters  the  whole  ac- 
count of  whom  is  compressed  into  twenty  or  thirty 
lines.  Mr.  Hiu^t  in  Pride  and  Prejudice  is  a  clear 
example. 

Glance  at  any  really  complex  character,  Jane 
Eyre,  for  instance,  and  the  differences  from  Miss 
Austen's  method  will  be  readily  perceptible.  Jane 
Eyre  has  powerful  passions  and  a  mighty  will;  even 
that  relatively  simple  combination  is  unknown  to 
Jane  Austen.  Capable  of  vehemence,  Jane  Eyre  can 
school  herself  to  long  years  of  savorless  and  colorless 
routine.  She  is  the  kind  of  person  to  whom  the 
education  of  a  young  girl  may  be  securely  committed, 
and  she  is  also  the  kind  of  person  to  whom  men  are 
impelled  to  relate  stories  of  their  discarded  mis- 
tresses. She  can  rally  and  advise  the  formidable 
St.  John  Rivers,  can  later  on  become  the  vassal  of  his 
relentless  will,  and  can  still  later  nerve  herself  to 
throw  off  that  vassalage.  She  is  demure  as  governess 
and  as  fiancee  she  is  malapert.  Even  with  com- 
plexities less  difficult  than  these  Miss  Austen  was 
scarcely  qualified  to  grapple.  Most  readers  would 
probably  dissent  from  my  own  impression  that 
Darcy  is  a  failure,  but  I  should  command  a  much 
wider,  indorsement   for   the   proposition    that    the 


164  JANE  AUSTEN 

Crawfords  with  their  cloven  natures  are  only  half 
successful,  and  that  a  two-sided  character  like 
Willoughby  is  rather  a  group  of  strokes  than  a  pic- 
ture. 

Restrictions  of  this  kind  may  not  always  impair 
the  quahty  of  Miss  Austen's  reaUsm,  but  they  limit 
its  field.  A  second  interesting  limitation  is  the 
virtual  suppression  of  the  body  as  a  factor  in  the 
dehneations.  Miss  Austen's  way  is  to  summarize 
the  physique  in  two  or  three  main  traits  the  specifica- 
tion of  which  is  compressible  into  as  many  lines. 
In  this  proceeding  the  body  is  paid  off,  so  to  speak, 
and  is  expected  to  trouble  an  upright  authoress  no 
further.  I  do  not  mean  that  Miss  Austen's  people 
are  ascetics  or  phantoms;  on  the  contrary,  the  men 
have  a  mundane  fondness  for  port,  and  the  objec- 
tions of  the  women  to  turkey  and  sweetbreads  with 
asparagus  are  always  removable  with  a  Httle  pres- 
sure. I  mean  that  that  sense  of  the  present  body  as 
a  spur  to  the  imagination  which  belongs  to  Thack- 
eray's Beatrix  Esmond,  to  James's  Lady  Barbarina, 
to  Meredith's  Clara  Middleton,  and  to  Hardy's 
Eustacia  Vye,  is  scarcely  discoverable  in  Miss  Aus- 
ten's novels.  The  body  is  not  an  actor  in  the  play. 
After  specification  the  features  vanish,  and  are  al- 
most never  recalled  except  in  relation  to  pallors  and 
blushes,  which  are  priceless  as  clews  to  invaluable 
"agitations." 

When  two  people  converse,  there  is  usually  no 


THE  REALISTS  165 

shift  of  position,  no  interpretative  gesture,  no  play 
of  feature,  no  modulation  of  tone.  Even  the  "she 
said's"  and  "he  answered's"  are  often  omitted,  and 
the  dialogue  suffers  a  depilation  not  unlike  that  of 
the  tonsured  dialogue  of  Alfieri  or  an  EngHsh  moral- 
ity. I  do  not  assert  that  the  speech  is  dull.  We  know 
from  Chaucer's  Monk  and  from  daily  observation 
that  baldness  often  shines,  and  conversation  in 
'  Miss  Austen  supports  the  induction. 

Another  conversational  trait  which  has  its 'part  in 
simplifying  Miss  Austen's  characters  may  be  de- 
scribed, a  httle  loosely,  as  generahty  or  abstraction. 
The  people  in  her  books  are  as  intensely  particular,  as 
vehemently  personal,  in  their  interests  as  people  are 
everywhere  in  Hfe  itself  and  in  all  pictures  of  hfe 
which  claim  even  an  approximation  to  exactness. 
The  talking  of  generahties,  like  the  talking  of  litera- 
ture, was  merely  a  badge  of  caste,  a  point  of  cere- 
mony; it  was,  nevertheless,  obeyed  with  that  zeal 
which  ceremony  so  readily  inspires  in  its  disciples. 
Ehzabeth  and  Anne  Elhot  are  discussing  the  proba- 
bility of  their  father's  victimization  by  an  uncomely 
but  insidious  woman. 

"You  must  have  heard  him  notice  Mrs.  Clay's  freckles." 
"There    is    hardly    any    personal    defect,"    replied   Anne, 

"which   an   agreeable  manner  might  not  gradually  reconcile 

one  to." 

"I  think  very  differently,"  answered  Elizabeth,  shortly,  "an 

agreeable  manner  may  set  off  handsome  features,  but  can  never 

alter  plain  ones." 


166  JANE  AUSTEN 

In  modem  realism  the  last  two  speeches  might 
read  as  follows: 

"Her  manners  are  good,"  said  Anne. 
"Manners,"  said  Elizabeth  with  a  sniff. 

This  roundness  of  period  in  which  generalities 
dilate  and  globe  themselves  has  much  the  same 
blurring  effect  on  variations  of  character  that  the 
enforced  adoption  of  the  orotund  by  a  group  of 
open-air  speakers  would  have  upon  the  idiosyn- 
cracies  of  voice.  The  expression  of  difference  by 
speech  is  limited.  The  conversation  remains  vig- 
orous, and  often  brilUant,  but  it  ceases  to  picture 
the  character,  or — to  speak  more  temperately  and 
accurately — a  veil  neither  quite  opaque  nor  quite 
transparent  is  dropped  between  us  and  the  picture. 
A  bodiless  personahty  expresses  itself  in  a  bodiless 
diction.  At  this  point  I  shall  be  very  lucky,  if  even 
the  liberal  and  amiable  reader  does  not  consign  this 
volume  to  the  fire,  or,  if  no  fire  be  at  hand,  to  a  place 
where  the  provision  of  that  element  is  supposed  to  be 
unlimited  and  constant.  The  reader  has  a  right 
to  his  indignation,  but  I  chng  to  my  thesis.  My 
sentiment  would  be  that  of  Themistocles  when 
Eurybiades,  the  Spartan,  Hfted  up  his  stick  to 
inflict  corporal  chastisement  on  the  presumptuous 
Athenian:  ''Strike,  but  hear  me."  Miss  Austen  is 
probably  the  most  downright,  the  most  positive,  of 
all  novelists  in  English,  yet  her  method  is  the  highly 


THE  REALISTS  167 

abstract  method  of  which  one  development  is  found 
in  the  ponderous  tenuity  of  Rasselas,  and  another  in 
the  formless  rarefaction  of  Mr.  James's  Sacred 
Fount.  Her  creations  are  not  so  much  bodied  forth  as 
minded  forth,  but  they  are  alive  in  the  face  of  condi- 
tions which  are  the  normal  extinguishers  of  vitaUty. 
So  much  stronger  was  her  nature  than  her  method 
that  the  quahty  of  her  work  may  ahnost  be  called 
the  antithesis  of  the  quahty  of  her  method.  She  was 
an  individuahst  of  the  first  order,  and  individuaUty 
in  her  figures  could  siu*vive  the  abatement  or  attenua- 
tion of  corporal  and  concrete  substance  to  an  extent 
to  which  the  length  and  breadth  of  literature  hardly 
offers  a  parallel.  The  character  like  Tithonus  might 
waste  to  a  grain  of  a  sand,  but  that  grain  would  be 
flint. 

There  is  another  point  in  which  the  truth  of  the 
characterizations  is  hable  to  a  grave  deduction.  She 
thought  herself  hostile  to  those 

Men  that  every  virtue  decks, 
And  women  models  of  their  sex 

to  whom  fiction  has  owed  half  its  popularity.  She 
writes  to  her  niece  Fanny:  ''Pictures  of  perfec- 
tion, as  you  know,  make  me  sick  and  wicked." 
We  have  seen  that  she  expresses  a  measure  of  dis- 
content with  the  faultless  heroine  of  her  own  Per- 
suasion. The  two  facts,  the  faultlessness  and  the 
discontent,    taken   together   are   significant.     Miss 


168  JANE  AUSTEN 

Austen  virtuously  prided  herself  on  her  aversion  to 
the  unqualified,  but  those  who  have  read  her  novels 
and  also  her  letters  from  Bath  will  understand  me 
when  I  say  that  several  of  her  own  characters  had 
their  dweUing  in  Paragon  Street.  Nothing  is  easier 
than  to  despise  perfection  in  the  characters  of  other 
novehsts.  Fielding  recoiled  from  Richardson's  in- 
effable Pamela,  but  I  should  not  like  to  undertake 
off-hand  to  name  a  fault  in  the  wife  of  Captain 
Booth  or  in  the  sweetheart  of  Tom  Jones.  George 
Ehot  in  Adam  Bede  began  with  a  plea  for  alloys  and 
mixtures,  but  was  destined  to  produce  in  Daniel 
Deronda  a  paragon  who  roused  explosiveness  in 
Stevenson.  Stevenson  did  not  draw  Derondas,  but, 
after  preaching  to  others,  I  suspect  that  he  himself 
became  a  castaway  with  John  Hawkins  on  Treasure 
Island,  if  not  with  David  Balfour  in  the  Hebrides. 
The  truth  is  that  virtue  is  so  insidious  that  the 
wariest  novelist  is  not  proof  against  its  seductions. 
How  does  the  case  stand  with  Miss  Austen? 

Of  Elinor  Dashwood  we  might  say  what  an  Amer- 
ican satirist  said  of  Elinor's  country  that  ''when  the 
vartoos  died  they  made  her  heir."  Colonel  Bran- 
don's worst  offense  is  rheumatism.  We  concede  a 
few  faults  to  EUzabeth  Bennet  and  her  lover,  though 
EUzabeth's  are  of  the  mildest  type,  and  Darcy's 
resemble  the  folds  in  a  table-cover,  which  disappear 
the  moment  it  is  spread  out.  But  what  is  to  be  said  in 
stay  of  sentence  for  the  impeccable  Jane  Bennet? 


THE  REALISTS  169 

The  other  Jane — ^Jane  Fairfax — is  abnost  as  bad — I 
should  say  as  good,  but  we  are  not  required  to  hke  her 
unless  we  choose.  The  interval  between  Fanny- 
Price  and  perfection  is  distressingly  sHght,  and 
Anne  EUiot  is  practically  dismissed  as  hopeless  by 
her  creator.  Edmund  Bertram  is  allowed  one  Uttle 
fault,  but  no  such  indulgence  is  vouchsafed  to 
Mr.  Henry  Tilney. 

Evil  in  many  characters  is  equally  unrelieved.  The 
virtues  have  been  so  far  used  up  on  the  paragons  that 
no  good  trait  is  left  for  Fanny  Dash  wood,  for  Lucy 
Steele,  for  George  Wickham,  for  Lydia  Bennet,  for 
Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh,  for  Mr.  Collins,  for 
General  Tilney,  for  John  Thorpe,  for  Isabella 
Thorpe,  for  Mr.  Elliot,  for  Mrs.  Elton.  About 
Mrs.  Norris  the  authors  of  the  Life  and  Letters  make 
the  following  remark : 

Mrs.  Norris,  we  are  told,  would  have  done  much  better  than 
Mrs.  Price  in  her  position.  It  must  have  given  Jane  Austen 
great  pleasure  to  make  this  remark.  None  of  her  bad  char- 
acters (except  possibly  EUzabeth  Elliot)  were  quite  inhuman  to 
her,  and  to  have  found  a  situation  in  which  Mrs.  Norris  might 
have  shone  would  be  [would  have  been?]  a  real  satisfaction. 

It  is  needless  to  conmaent  on  the  methods  of  a 
novelist  in  whom  a  character  is  only  saved  from 
total  inhumanity  by  a  paragraph  of  eleven  Unes  in 
the  last  quarter  of  the  book. 

This  is  one  phase  of  the  matter.  There  is  another 
phase,  smaller  in  bulk  and  less  pronoimced  in  quahty, 


170  JANE  AUSTEN 

but  of  much  significance  and  of  surpassing  worth. 
As  we  have  seen,  Miss  Austen  was  not  strong  in  the 
divided  character,  but  in  what  may  be  called  the 
slanting  character,  the  character  that  is  remote 
both  from  the  perpendicular  and  the  horizontal,  she 
had  a  rare  and  precious  gift.  The  decent  and  self- 
respecting  meanness  of  John  Dashwood,  the  mixture 
of  self-indulgence  and  obhgingness  in  Charles  Mus- 
grove,  receive  httle  space  or  emphasis,  but  they  are  of 
that  profound  truth  which  is  plumbed  only  here  and 
there  by  the  wisest  and  most  penetrating  fiction. 
The  case  of  Emma  Woodhouse  is  somewhat  different. 
Here  the  character,  excellent  in  the  main,  is  weakened 
by  frailties  that  are  more  damaging  than  grave,  or, 
if  the  reader  likes,  more  estranging  than  damaging. 
The  plan  requires  that  this  character  be  endangered 
and  safe-guarded  at  every  moment,  and  the  skill 
shown  in  the  convoy  is  worthy  of  the  sister  of  two 
admirals.  Mr.  John  Knightley  presents  a  third  prob- 
lem. He  has  an  ill  temper,  not  the  agreeable  and  al- 
most ingratiating  ill  temper  which  seasons  the  virtue 
of  his  uncompromising  brother,  but  the  sort  of  ill 
temper  of  which  one  might  say,  in  mimicry  of  the 
Frenchman's  censure  of  the  murder  of  the  duke 
d'Enghien,  that  it  is  worse  than  a  fault,  it  is  a  nuis- 
ance. He  really  tries  the  reader,  yet  keeps  his  place 
in  the  reader's  esteem — a  process  normal  in  life, 
but  reserved  in  fiction  for  the  attempered  hand  of 
the  severe  and  ripened  artist. 


THE  REALISTS  171 

I  shall  quote  a  few  passages  which  show  Miss 
Austen's  grasp  of  this  doubleness,  this  circumflex,  in 
life  for  which  the  dramatic  craftsman  is  so  prone  to 
substitute  the  grave  or  the  acute  accent. 

Charlotte  herself  was  tolerably  composed.  She  had  gained  her 
point,  and  had  time  to  consider  of  it.  Her  reflections  were  in 
general  satisfactory.  Mr.  Collins,  to  be  sure,  was  neither  sen- 
sible nor  agreeable;  his  society  was  irksome,  and  his  attachment 
to  her  must  be  unaginary.  But  still  he  would  be  her  husband. 
Without  thinking  highly  either  of  men  or  of  matrimony,  marriage 
had  always  been  her  object;  it  was  the  only  honourable  provision 
for  well-educated  young  women  of  small  fortune,  and  however 
uncertain  of  giving  happiness,  must  be  their  pleasantest  preser- 
vative from  want.  This  preservative  she  had  now  obtained;  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  without  having  ever  been  handsome, 
she  felt  all  the  good  luck  of  it. 

This  may  be  questionable  as  ethics — it  is  certainly- 
dismal  as  philosophy;  but  its  art  is  consummate. 
Two  passages  from  Persuasion  may  be  cited. 

He  had  very  good  spirits,  which  never  seemed  much  affected 
by  his  wife's  occasional  lowness,  bore  with  her  unreasonable- 
ness sometimes  to  Anne's  admiration,  and  upon  the  whole, 
though  there  was  very  often  a  little  disagreement  (in  which  she 
had  sometimes  more  share  than  she  wished,  being  appealed  to 
by  both  parties)  they  might  pass  for  a  happy  couple. 

Lady  Elliot  had  been  an  excellent  woman,  sensible  and  ami- 
able, whose  judgment  and  conduct,  if  they  might  be  pardoned 
the  youthful  infatuation  which  had  made  her  Lady  Elliot,  had 
never  required  indulgence  afterwards.  She  had  humoured,  or 
softened,  or  concealed  his  failings,  and  promoted  his  real  re- 
spectability for  seventeen  years;  and  though  not  the  very  happiest 
being  in  the  world  herself,  had  found  enough  in  her  duties,  her 


172  JANE  AUSTEN 

friends,  and  her  children,  to  attach  her  to  life,  and  make  it  no 
matter  of  indifference  to  her  when  she  was  called  on  to  quit 
them. 

Miss  Austen  is  clearly  at  home  in  that  prevalent 
state  of  mind  to  which  fiction  so  rarely  adjusts  it- 
self— the  state  in  which  happiness  is  sufficiently 
clouded  to  lose  all  its  brilhancy  without  losing  all 
its  worth.  It  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  main  busi- 
ness of  hfe  were  to  confute  our  expectations,  to  upset 
our  theories,  and  to  blunt  our  epigrams.  Even  this 
dictum  is  too  epigrammatic  to  be  true.  The  division 
of  men  into  optimists  and  pessimists  is  at  once  the 
consequence  and  the  evidence  of  the  refusal  of  life  to 
ally  itself  with  either  party. 

In  Miss  Austen's  standing  as  reaHst  three  elements 
must  be  noted — the  conventionahst,  the  dramatist, 
and  the  observer.  Convention  was  mighty  in  her, 
and  influenced  her  conformity  to  truth.  It  not  only 
affected  her  style  and  her  ethics,  but  it  made  the 
whole  form — not  the  spirit — of  her  conversation 
artificial,  and — as  I  personally  think — it  warped 
reahsm  by  informing  her  novels  with  what  one  may 
call  the  odor  of  the  seminar.  The  second  force  is  the 
dramatist,  working  on  an  admirable  ground  of  ob- 
served truth,  but  heightening  the  hghts  and  blacken- 
ing the  shadows,  producing  integers  of  good  and  evil, 
intensifying  and  simplifying  till  nothing  was  left 
of  the  character  but  the  exaggeration  and  reiteration 
of  one  or  possibly  two  or  three  quaUties — giving  in 


THE  REALISTS  173 

the  end  the  truth,  not  of  Ufe,  but  of  comedy.  Last  of 
all  comes  the  observer,  in  the  tempered  and  chastened 
exercise  of  a  faculty  whose  compass  has  often  been 
exaggerated,  but  the  quality,  the  delightfulness,  of 
which  it  would  be  difficult  to  overpraise. 


PART   III 
THE  WOMAN 


CHAPTER   IX 
LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE 

In  this  final  section  I  shall  treat  of  Jane  Austen's 
personality  with  glances  at  certain  literary  traits  to 
which  that  personahty  is  closely  related. 

Miss  Austen  is  perhaps  the  poorest  subject  for 
biography  of  all  notable  persons  who  have  hved  since 
biography  began  to  flourish.  Her  family  was  large, 
her  acquaintance  not  small;  she  was  part  of  a  peer- 
ing, hstening,  gossiping  community;  and  forty-two 
years  in  one  district  and  four  towns  should  have  sup- 
pUed  a  field  for  the  accumulation  of  reminiscence. 
But  her  life  was  barren  of  events;  her  fame,  when  it 
tardily  arrived,  was  shy;  and  curiosity  awoke  only 
after  its  nutriment  had  vanished.  She  died  in  1817; 
the  memoir  of  her  nephew,  J.  E.  Austen-Leigh,  pub- 
lished in  1870,  was  the  first  attempt  to  present  her 
fife  in  narrative.  In  respect  of  material  that  memoir 
is  famished,  though  the  grace  and  exquisite  humihty 
with  which  the  httle  repast  is  served  leave  us  obliged 
even  by  its  meagreness.  The  taste  and  loyalty,  if 
not  the  grace,  of  the  memoir-writer  was  bequeathed 
to  his  son  and  grandson,  WiUiam  Austen-Leigh  and 
Richard  Arthur  Austen-Leigh,  who  pubhshed  in 
1913  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Jane  Austen.    The  life- 

177 


178  JANE  AUSTEN 

story  yielded  scarcely  anything  to  further  pressure; 
but,  in  view  of  Jane's  own  destitution  on  this  score,  a 
purse  of  facts,  if  I  may  hazard  the  expression,  was 
made  up  in  her  behalf  to  which  every  ancestor,  rela- 
tive, and  acquaintance  was  bidden  to  contribute  his 
mite.  More  important  was  the  access  to  the  Letters 
of  Jane  Austen,  published  in  1884  by  her  grand- 
nephew,  Lord  Brabourne,  with  explanations  of  every 
point  within  the  editor's  knowledge  for  which  ex- 
planation was  desirable  or  permissible.  Apart  from 
the  novels,  these  letters  are  our  chief  datum  for 
Miss  Austen's  character;  they  furnish  us  with  a 
victus,  if  not  a  vita.  Leshe  Stephen,  in  the  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography  calls  them  trivial — a  remark 
of  which  the  seriousness  is  almost  majestic.  Ad- 
dressed mainly  to  a  sister,  the  Letters  choose  sisterly 
topics;  but  they  paint  a  fashion  of  Hfe  in  concise  and 
pithy  touches,  and  are  crisped  with  a  humor  of  which 
formal  hterature  might  be  proud. 

I  shall  dispense  with  the  affectation  of  chronology 
in  the  few  facts  as  to  Miss  Austen's  life  which  I  think 
it  needful  to  set  down.  Her  father,  George  Austen, 
born  in  1731,  held  the  hving  of  Steventon  in  Hamp- 
shire from  1761  to  1801,  and  died  in  Bath  in  1805. 
Her  mother,  Cassandra  Leigh,  a  shrewd  and  hu- 
morous woman,  after  bringing  eight  children  into 
the  world,  settled  down  into  that  state  of  health 
which  permits  one  to  enjoy  the  privileges  of  an  in- 
vahd  to  the  age  of  eighty-eight.     Of  this  family 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  179 

Jane  was  the  sixth  child.  She  had  one  sister,  Cas- 
sandra, with  whom  her  relations  throughout  her  life 
were  exquisite,  and  six  brothers,  only  one  of  whom 
seems  to  have  been  overlooked  in  nature's  generous 
bestowal  of  capacities  and  virtues.  The  eldest  son, 
James,  was  a  clergyman.  Another  son,  Edward,  was 
adopted  by  a  rich  landowner,  whose  fortune  he 
inherited  and  whose  name  he  took.  Two  other 
brothers,  Francis  and  Charles,  rose  to  admiralships 
in  the  English  navy.  Jane's  favorite  brother,  Henry, 
was  a  briUiant  and  unstable  character,  who  gave  up 
orders  to  enter  the  mihtia,  and  who  saw  in  the  in- 
solvency of  his  banking-house  in  later  life  a  clear 
proof  of  his  vocation  for  the  ministry. 

The  family  had  many  roots  and  many  branches, 
was  cohesive  within  itself  and  adhesive  to  its  con- 
nections, was  prone  to  marry  and  remarry,  was 
lavish  of  births  and  sparing  of  deaths,  had  no  preju- 
dice against  food  and  drink,  and  loved  station, 
money,  and  office  with  an  artlessness  which  may  be 
taken  as  a  partial  set-off  for  its  intensity.  They  were 
prone  to  those  neighborships  and  clanships  which 
demand  for  their  maintenance  both  a  certain  tender- 
ness and  a  certain  toughness  of  the  sensibilities. 
They  had  a  healthy  fondness  for  good  times  in  which 
the  younger  daughter  dutifully  shared. 

Miss  Austen's  love-affairs,  so  far  as  present  evi- 
dence goes,  present  nothing  that  need  detain  or 
agitate  the  biographer.    The  industry  of  her  rela- 


180  JANE  AUSTEN 

tives  has  come  upon  traces  of  two  flirtations,  of 
which  Jane  herself  speaks  with  a  matter-of-fact  and 
reassuring  Hghtness.  Her  niece,  Caroline,  is  voucher 
for  another  story  of  Jane's  acceptance  of  an  income 
and  position  overnight  and  her  rejection  next 
morning  of  the  human  being  with  whom  these  ad- 
vantages were  encumbered.  There  is  still  another 
pointless  story  of  a  young  man  attractive  to  Jane 
who  was  expected  to  reappear  and  whose  failure  to 
meet  expectations  was  the  effect  of  a  rendezvous  with 
death.  There  is  every  reason  to  beheve  that  Miss 
Austen  in  her  youth  had  a  girl's  fondness  for  society, 
attention,  and,  very  possibly,  flirtation,  and  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  her  aversion  to  matrimony 
was  of  the  kind  which  suitable  pressure  from  an 
ehgible  quarter  would  have  failed  to  conquer.  Her 
person  is  said  to  have  been  very  attractive.  I  quote 
from  the  author  of  the  memoir. 

Her  figure  was  rather  tall  and  slender,  her  step  light  and  firm, 
and  her  whole  appearance  expressive  of  health  and  animation. 
In  complexion  she  was  a  clear  brunette  with  a  rich  colour;  she 
had  full  round  cheeks,  with  mouth  and  nose  small  and  well 
formed,  bright  hazel  eyes,  and  brown  hair  forming  natural  curls 
close  round  her  face.  If  not  so  regularly  handsome  as  her  sister, 
yet  her  countenance  had  a  peculiar  charm  of  its  own  to  the  eyes 
of  most  beholders. 

Miss  Austen's  later  years  were  spent  in  Bath, 
Southampton,  and  the  village  of  Chawton  in  Hamp- 
shire, in  which  Edward  Knight — formerly  Edward 


LIFE  AND   WAYS  OF  LIFE  181 

Austen — had  offered  an  asylum  to  his  mother  and 
sisters.  The  Austen  novels  were  written  rapidly  in 
two  groups,  parted  by  a  singular  hiatus  of  eleven 
sterile  years.  The  first  group,  comprising  Pride  and 
Prejudice,  Sense  and  Sensibility,  and  Northanger 
Abbey,  was  written  in  the  order  named  between  1796 
and  1798.  The  second  group,  comprising  Mans- 
field Park,  Emma,  and  Persuasion,  was  written 
between  1811  and  1816.  The  pubHcation  was  much 
more  compressed  than  the  writing.  The  six  novels 
all  came  out  between  1811  and  1818.  Jane  Austen 
died  in  Winchester,  on  July  18,  1817,  at  the  age  of 
forty-one,  of  a  malady  which  her  physicians  could 
apparently  neither  cure  nor  name.  Her  grave  is  in 
Winchester  cathedral. 

In  the  dearth  of  biography  I  shall  use  the  letters  as 
the  basis  of  a  sketch  of  Jane's  habits  and  interests, 
not  shrinking  from  a  Httle  detail,  which  is  more 
likely  to  surprise  than  to  fatigue  the  reader. 

Jane  Austen  was  much  too  substantial  a  person  to 
affect  any  indifference  to  food.  She  is  specific  in 
the  expression  of  her  attachment  to  cold  souse  which 
she  ''devours"  with  the  approval  and  assistance  of 
her  two  nieces.  I  trust  that  this  announcement  will 
arm  the  reader  for  the  still  more  depressing  informa- 
tion that  at  a  certain  supper  toasted  cheese  was 
ordered  expressly  on  her  account.  Her  mother  calls 
her  a  very  good  housekeeper,  an  estimate  in  which 
Jane  cordially  concurs,  adding  that  she  always  pro- 


182  JANE  AUSTEN 

vides  such  things  as  please  her  own  appetite,  "which 
I  consider  the  chief  merit  in  housekeeping."  She 
inclines  to  haricot  mutton,  to  ragout  veal,  and  to 
experimental  ox-cheeks,  in  which  httle  dumpUngs  are 
affectionately  secreted.  She  invites  the  physician 
to  dinner,  and  ''was  not  ashamed  at  asking  him  to 
sit  down  to  table,  for  we  had  some  pease-soup,  a 
spare-rib,  and  a  pudding."  ''We  are  to  kill  a  pig 
soon,"  she  remarks  with  rural  directness  and  house- 
wifely foresight.  The  tiu-key  redux  which  we  think 
so  characteristic  of  Thanksgiving  in  America  has 
clearly  broadened  slowly  down  from  precedent  to 
precedent,  for  Jane  Austen  has  a  jest  at  a  French 
cook's  expertness  in  this  particular.  The  departure 
of  guests  is  a  welcome  rehef  from  the  torments  of 
rice  puddings  and  apple  dumplings,  which  may  have 
been  the  cHches  of  cookery,  abhorrent  to  the  true 
styhst  in  housekeeping. 

In  travelhng  Jane's  correspondence  and  her  bodily 
frame  are  nourished  on  the  same  fare.  At  Devizes, 
as  Cassandra  is  punctihously  informed,  they  had 
asparagus  and  a  lobster,  and  cheesecakes  that  made 
the  town  memorable  to  the  children.  At  Dartford, 
the  absence  of  oyster  sauce  for  the  boiled  fowl  is 
confided  to  the  same  sympathetic  ear.  At  Henry 
Austen's  a  French  cook  receives  due  plaudits  for  a 
most  comfortable  dinner  of  soup,  fish,  bouillee, 
partridges,  and  an  apple  tart.  Miss  Austen  has  a 
true  housekeeper's. interest^ in  prices..  Bath  is  vir-. 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  183 

tuous  in  the  point  of  meat  (only  eightpence  a  pound), 
but  its  charges  for  salmon  are  iniquitous. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Jane,  in  her  solici- 
tude about  food,  becomes  obUvious  of  the  claims  of 
drink.  Her  affection  for  wine  is  imconcealed.  In  a 
letter  written  January  24, 18 17,  when  already  stricken 
with  disease,  she  wants  a  recipe  for  some  excellent 
orange  wine  made  out  of  Seville  oranges.  At  her 
brother  Edward's  she  writes:  "I  shall  eat  ice  and 
drink  French  wine,  and  be  above  vulgar  economy." 
At  Henry's  we  hear  of  a  midnight  participation  in 
''soup  and  wine  and  water"  (before  they  go  to  their 
''holes").  She  writes  from  her  brother  Edward's 
in  1813 : "  By-the-bye,  as  I  must  leave  off  being  young, 
I  find  many  douceurs  in  being  a  sort  of  chaperon, 
for  I  am  put  on  the  sofa  near  the  fire,  and  can  drink 
as  much  wine  as  I  like." 

At  an  earlier  date  she  writes:  "I  believe  I  drank 
too  much  wine  last  night  at  Hurstboume;  I  know 
not  how  else  to  accoimt  for  the  shaking  of  my  hand 
to-day."  This  may  be  only  a  humorous  pretense, 
but  there  is  httle  reason  to  suppose  that  the  reahty 
would  have  disquieted  the  writer. 

Jane  did  not  confine  her  partiahties  to  imported 
liqueurs  (they  had  liqueurs  even  in  her  day).  The 
authoress  whose  pecuharity  in  hterature  was  her 
fondness  for  the  EngUsh  domestic  home-brew  was 
true  to  her  principles  in  the  matter  of  drinks.  She 
hkes  mead,  and  writes  in  1813:  "I  find  time  in  the 


184  JANE  AUSTEN 

midst  of  port  and  Madeira  to  think  of  the  fourteen 
bottles  of  mead  very  often."  She  turns  from  the 
perfunctory  mention  of  a  pianoforte  to  the  heart- 
felt cry:  "We  hear  now  that  there  is  to  be  no  honey 
this  year.  Bad  news  for  us.  We  must  husband  our 
present  stock  of  mead."  Mead  divided  her  affec- 
tions with  spruce  beer.  It  was  a  period  in  which  the 
variety  of  beverages  at  the  same  meal  was  some- 
times interestingly  great.  Mrs.  Austen  reports  a 
breakfast  in  which  tea,  coffee,  and  chocolate  were 
served.  Jane's  niece  Anna  returns  from  an  evening 
in  which  sillabub,  tea,  and  coffee  were  the  suite  or 
the  escort  of  a  hot  supper.  Jane  is  very  kind  as  a 
rule  to  her  niece  Fanny,  but  she  will  stand  no  juvenile 
nonsense  on  the  subject  of  the  consumption  of  tea. 
"As  to  Fanny  and  her  twelve  poimds  in  a  twelve- 
month, she  may  talk  till  she  is  as  black  in  the  face 
as  her  own  tea,  but  I  cannot  beheve  her — more 
Hkely  twelve  pounds  to  a  quarter." 

If  Jane  was  Enghsh  in  her  respect  for  ahment, 
she  was  woman  in  her  emphasis  on  dress.  She  is  no 
more  frivolous  in  her  care  for  clothes  than  she  is 
animal  in  her  stress  on  nutriment;  both  are  merely 
articles  in  the  treaty  which  she  made  at  the  outset 
with  things  as  they  are.  In  relation  to  clothes  her 
sentiment  shows  more  of  the  zeal  of  the  partisan 
than  of  the  gravity  of  the  devotee.  They  mix  good- 
naturedly  enough  with  more  ethereal  interests.  "I 
have  read  the  Corsair,  mended  my  petticoat,  and 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  185 

have  nothing  else  to  do."  Literature  and  dress  are 
associated  after  another  fashion  in  the  following 
mention  of  a  cap.  "  It  will  be  white  satin  and  lace, 
and  a  Uttle  white  flower  perking  out  of  the  left  ear, 
like  Harriet  Byron's  feather."  Jane's  interest  in 
caps  is  inextinguishable.  She  wears  a  black  cap  to  a 
ball  to  the  probable  admiration  of  everybody  in  the 
room,  even  at  the  time  of  hfe  when  she  could  dance 
twenty  dances  without  fatigue  and  imagine  herself 
dancing  for  a  week  together.  She  and  her  sister 
were  thought  to  have  taken  to  caps  and  the  other 
ensigns  of  middle  age  earUer  than  their  years  or  their 
looks  required. 

She  was  not,  however,  indifferent  to  fashion.  ''I 
find  my  straw  bonnet  looking  very  much  like  other 
people's,  and  quite  as  smart."  She  enumerates 
with  gusto  the  fruits  discoverable  on  the  hats  of 
the  fashionable  world  in  Bath,  grapes,  cherries, 
plums,  apricots,  even  a  bunch  of  strawberries. 
Nevertheless,  there  are  moments  of  wilfulness  when 
she  daUies  with  the  thought  of  nonconformity.  "I 
wear  my  gauze  gown  to-day,  long  sleeves  and  all.  I 
shall  see  how  they  succeed,  but  as  yet  I  have  no 
reason  to  suppose  long  sleeves  are  allowable."  She 
is  resigned  to  the  observance  of  the  proprieties. 
When  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  dies,  the  mourning 
gives  importance  to  the  death.  "I  suppose  every- 
body will  be  black  for  the  D.  of  G.  Must  we  buy 
lace,  or  will  ribbon  do?"    She  is  girhsh  enough  at 


186  JANE  AUSTEN 

thirty-eight  to  call  gowns  sweet.  "They  are  so 
very  sweet  by  candle  light."  She  can  satirize  ef- 
fusiveness over  dress  without  in  the  least  renouncing 
her  share  in  the  object  of  her  satire.  "I  have  got 
your  cloak  home,  which  is  quite  dehghtful — as  de- 
hghtful  at  least  as  half  the  circumstances  which  are 
called  so." 

She  has  a  rather  piquant  fashion  of  personifying 
articles  of  clothing.  ''I  took  the  Uberty  a  few  days 
ago  of  asking  your  black  velvet  bonnet  to  lend  me 
its  cawl,  which  it  very  readily  did."  "I  have  found 
your  white  mittens.  They  were  folded  up  within  a 
clean  nightcap,  and  send  their  duty  to  you."  She 
takes  an  unaffected  and  un  apologizing  interest  in 
all  the  httle  womanly  shifts  and  crafts  by  which 
appearances  are  sustained  and  incomes  husbanded. 
Evening  gowns  are  made  into  morning  gowns.  The 
outer  gown  is  transformed  into  a  petticoat.  "We 
are  all  busy  making  Edward's  shirts,  and  I  am  proud 
to  say  that  I  am  the  neatest  worker  of  the  party." 
A  frank  and  humorous  readiness  in  the  grapple  with 
any  of  the  httle  homely  exigencies  of  a  life  that 
amused  her  almost  as  much  as  it  bored  her  is  char- 
acteristic of  Jane  Austen  everywhere. 

She  is  not  uncritical  of  the  dress  of  other  people. 
The  right  to  censure  other  people's  dress  is  the  rec- 
ompense for  the  hours  of  anxiety  given  to  one's 
own.  "Tom  Lefroy  has  but  one  fault,  which  time 
will,  I  trust,  entirely  remove — it  is  that  his  morninc 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  187 

coat  is  a  great  deal  too  light.  He  is  a  very  great 
admirer  of  Tom  Jones,  and  therefore  wears  the  same 
coloured  clothes,  I  imagine,  which  he  did  when  he 
was  wounded."  She  appears  to  have  favored  temper- 
ance in  the  colors  of  her  own  apparel,  and  some  pink 
shoes  are  referred  to  with  virtuous  misgiving. 

Jane  has  a  practical  woman's  interest  in  the  prob- 
lems of  housing,  bedding,  and  transporting  other 
people.  ''Pray  where  did  the  boys  sleep?"  she  asks 
in  a  letter  to  her  sister  with  the  curiosity  of  a  New 
England  housekeeper.  The  benefits  of  her  criticism 
are  not  withheld  from  improvements  in  the  shrubbery 
or  repairs  in  the  house.  Her  attitude  toward  serv- 
ants is  resignedly  skeptical.  There  are  indications 
that  the  rebellious  tolerance  and  smouldering  pro- 
test which  sometimes  seems  almost  the  mutual  at- 
titude of  mistress  and  servant  in  America  had  its 
prototypes  in  Jane  Austen's  England. 

A  woman  to  whom  the  fact  meant  so  much  would 
affect  no  dehcate  indifference  to  money,  and  the 
letters  and  novels  agree  in  testifying  to  the  weight 
that  Jane  Austen  gave  to  pounds.  Money  is  never 
lightly  spoken  of,  either  by  the  most  sensible  or  the 
most  romantic  persons  in  her  books,  and  even  people 
like  Elinor  Dashwood  and  Edward  Ferrars,  whose 
love  is  sincere  and  profound,  are  perfectly  clear  as 
to  the  relation  of  income  to  well-being.  So  far  there 
is  no  ground  for  criticism.  There  is  nothing  sordid 
or  base  in  the  perception  that  a  necessity,  sordid 


188  JANE  AUSTEN 

itself  or  even  base,  if  you  insist,  is  a  necessity.  Even 
spirituality  may  innocently  note  a  fact,  but  Miss 
Austen's  interest  in  money  is  very  far  from  stopping 
at  this  point.  I  wish  to  speak  with  measure  of  a 
frame  of  mind  of  which  measure  was  a  prime  char- 
acteristic, but  I  think  we  may  say  that  Miss  Austen's 
attitude  toward  money,  while  neither  idolatrous  nor 
abject,  is  definable  as  homage.  She  was  neither  a 
Fanny  Dash  wood  nor  a  Mrs.  Norris,  but  money  was 
for  her  one  of  the  great  good  facts  of  fife  in  the  savor 
and  brightness  of  which  her  imagination  fondl}" 
rested.  She  says  in  one  letter:  ''I  shall  keep  my  ten 
pounds  to  wrap  myself  up  in."  The  reference  is 
naturally  to  apparel,  but  I  think  Jane  would  have 
been  quite  capable  of  nesthng  cosily  into  the  wanii 
wrappage  of  a  snug  income.  "My  father  is  doing 
all  in  his  power  to  increase  his  income  by  raismg 
his  tithes,  etc.,  and  /  do  not  despair  of  getting  very 
nearly  six  hundred  a  year"  (the  itaUcs  are  mine). 
''We  have  now  pretty  well  ascertained  James's  in- 
come to  be  eleven  hundred  pounds,  curate  paid, 
which  makes  us  very  happy"  (itahcs  mine).  This 
is  the  idyl  of  the  cash-box;  this  is  the  Faithful 
Shepherdess  in  a  new  guise. 

Sing  his  praises  that  doth  keep 

Our  flocks  from  harm, 
Pan,  the  father  of  our  sheep; 

In  a  family  of  this  sort  the  loss  of  a  legacy  cures 
any  grief  that  might  have  been  evoked  by  the  loss 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  189 

of  the  testator.  Jane  is  suffering  from  a  bilious 
attack  when  the  news  of  her  uncle's  disposition  of 
his  property  is  revealed  to  her  by  indiscreet  rela- 
tives. "I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  the  shock  of  my 
uncle's  will  brought  on  a  relapse."  The  touch  that 
follows  is  delectable:  "My  mother  has  borne  the 
forgetfulness  of  her  extremely  well"  (the  itahcs  are 
Jane's).  "'Forgiveness/  said  Mr.  Pecksniff,  'en- 
tire and  pure  forgiveness  is  not  incompatible  with  a 
wounded  heart ;  perchance  when  the  heart  is  wounded 
it  becomes  a  greater  virtue.' " 

Jane's  objection  to  playing  cards  for  money  is 
characteristic.  ''There  were  two  pools  at  commerce, 
but  I  would  not  play  more  than  one,  for  the  stake  was 
three  shillings,  and  I  cannot  afford  to  lose  that  twice 
in  an  evening."  It  is  almost  needless  to  observe 
that  in  this  circle  the  getting  or  not  getting  of  a 
frank  is  among  the  small  poignancies  of  life.  Noth- 
ing awakens  tenderness  like  a  gift  of  money.  The 
very  person  of  the  donor  is  renovated  to  the  grate- 
ful vision.  "I  have  this  moment  received  51.  from 
kind,  beautiful  Edward''  (itahcs  mine).  The  possibil- 
ity— or  rather  probabihty — that  Jane  is  jocular  in 
such  expressions  must  be  punctihously  allowed  for; 
but  even  in  the  act  of  allowance  one  must  remember 
that  humor  in  such  cases  is  the  excuse  for  sincerity 
quite  as  often  as  it  is  the  excuse  for  insincerity. 

If  the  above  paragraphs  produce  the  impression 
that  Miss  Austen  was  grasping  or  parsimonious, 


190  JANE  AUSTEN 

they  have  been  unskilfully  written.  The  delicacy — 
the  interest — of  the  situation  Hes  in  the  fact  that 
Miss  Austen  was  all  that  these  paragraphs  imply 
without  being  either  grasping  or  parsimonious.  The 
thought  of  money  raised  in  her  mind  a  glow  not  un- 
Uke  that  which  the  sight  of  fire  awakens  in  a  chilly 
person  in  a  fickle  climate;  that  glow  does  not  imply 
that  its  owner  will  monopohze  the  cheer  of  the 
hearth  or  will  be  niggardly  of  coals  to  freezing 
neighbors.  Such  a  feeling  in  relation  to  money 
indicates  nothing  worse  than  the  abeyance  of 
lethargy  of  those  higher  spiritual  interests  which, 
in  women  like  George  Ehot  and  Mrs.  Browning, 
preoccupy  the  imagination  and  the  feelings,  and  re- 
duce money  to  the  condition  of  a  railway  ticket — a 
thing  to  be  at  once  guarded  and  despised.  Miss 
Austen  made  few  or  no  efforts  to  acquire  money.  A 
reaUstic  estimate  of  pubhshers  led  her  to  accept 
contentedly  rather  small  returns  for  literary  products 
of  extraordinary  value.  That  she  could  be  generous 
both  in  act  and  heart  is  evinced  in  the  following 
quotation:  "Mrs.  Deedes  is  as  welcome  as  May  to 
all  our  benevolence  to  her  son;  we  only  lamented 
that  we  could  not  do  more  and  that  the  501.  we 
sUpped  into  his  hand  at  parting  was  necessarily  the 
limit  of  our  offering." 

Miss  Austen's  esteem  for  family  was  large,  and 
EUzabeth  Bennet's  defiant  cry,  "I  am  a  gentleman's 
daughter,"  was  doubtless  only  a  proud  echo  of  the 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  191 

unuttered  boast  of  the  daughter  of  George  Austen 
and  Cassandra  Leigh.  It  does  not  appear,  however, 
that  she  set  a  high  value  on  rank  and  title  as  things 
distinct  from  blood,  or  that  the  difference  between 
high  blood  and  good  blood  impressed  her  as  momen- 
tous. Rank  in  her  novels  hardly  rises  higher  than 
the  baronetcy,  and  her  baronets,  Sir  WiUiam  Lucas, 
Sir  John  Middleton,  Sir  Thomas  Bertram,  and 
Sir  Walter  Elliot,  are  guiltless  of  any  tendency  to 
monopoHze  the  talents  or  the  virtues.  Poor  Lady 
Catherine  de  Bourgh  is  worse  mauled  than  almost 
any  other  victim  of  Miss  Austen's  none  too  lenient 
satire,  and  as  to  the  Viscountess  Dalrymple  and  her 
daughter,  the  rustle  of  whose  skirts  and  whose  sta- 
tionery is  audible  in  a  chapter  or  two  of  Persuasion, 
they  are  cavaherly  dismissed  with  the  observation 
that  they  were  "nothing." 

Rank  and  money  stood  on  different  footings  for 
Miss  Austen.  Her  hard  sense  drew  an  inmiitigable 
distinction  between  the  soHd  earth  of  which  gold 
is  an  extract  and  the  air  out  of  whose  fluid  and  im- 
palpable substance  such  breaths  as  earl,  marquis, 
and  duke  are  cheaply  and  effortlessly  drawn.  She 
was  not  in  the  least  overwhelmed  by  the  consent 
of  the  de  facto  sovereign  of  England  to  receive  the 
dedication  of  a  novel,  and  the  impassive  formula. 
To  the  Prince  Regent,  shows  no  cleavage  in  her  im- 
penetrable reserve.  In  the  gregarious  and  compre- 
hensive social  life  of  the  county  in  Miss  Austen's 


192  JANE  AUSTEN 

day  lords  seem  to  have  associated  with  commoners 
on  easy  and  hberal,  if  not  precisely  equal,  terms,  and 
the  noveUst  mastered  the  art  of  mentioning  a  peer 
without  a  simper  or  a  tremor.  Jane's  mother  was 
the  great-granddaughter  of  a  lord,  Jane's  brother 
Francis  became  a  baronet,  his  wife  had  cousinships 
among  lords,  Jane's  first  cousin  married  a  French 
count,  Jane's  niece  married  a  baronet,  and  the 
grand-nephew  who  edited  her  letters  is  a  lord.  The 
imposture  of  nobihty — meaning  by  that  simply 
its  failure  to  equaUze  its  talents  or  its  virtues  with 
its  rank — would  soon  have  been  pierced  by  an  ob- 
server so  keen,  in  circimistances  so  propitious  to  ob- 
servation. The  theory  put  forth  by  a  character  in 
Chaucer  that  lords  are  ''half-goddes  in  this  world 
here"  received  no  indorsement  from  Miss  Austen's 
invincible  common  sense. 

Jane's  indifference  to  politics  was  total;  her  own 
nephew  can  get  no  further  than  the  surmise  that  she 
shared  the  mild  Toryism  of  her  family.  The  Na- 
poleonic era  thundered  vainly  to  her  serene  deaf- 
ness. In  one  letter  she  exclaims:  "What  weather, 
and  what  news."  Her  biographers  conjecture  that 
the  news  is  the  Battle  of  Leipsic.  The  dedication 
to  the  Battle  of  Leipsic  of  half  a  sentence  (a  sentence 
of  five  words)  the  other  half  of  which  is  occupied  with 
a  eulogy  of  the  weather  is  as  original  as  anything  in 
Pride  and  Prejudice.  The  navy,  through  its  pro- 
vision of  sustenance  for  two  Austens,  ranks  rather 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  193 

more  highly  in  the  scale  of  institutions.  In  Persua- 
sion the  navy  once  becomes  the  subject  of  conver- 
sation, and  questions  such  as  the  admission  of  lady 
passengers  to  a  warship  or  the  wisdom  of  an  admiral's 
wife  in  sharing  the  voyages  of  her  husband  are  dis- 
cussed with  appropriate  gravity.  One  half  recalls 
the  type  of  rehgious  question  which  interested  the 
editor  of  a  congeries  of  periodicals  and  newspapers 
in  Arnold  Bennett's  What  the  Public  Wants:  "Shall 
lady  parishioners  give  presents  to  curates?"  It  is 
pleasant,  moreover,  to  reflect  that  alertness  of  mind 
can  always  find  something  of  interest  in  the  most 
sterile  periods  of  the  most  lifeless  institutions.  The 
British  navy  could  furnish  enhvening  topics  to  Jane 
Austen  even  amid  the  tediums  of  Aboukir  and  the 
nuUities  of  Trafalgar. 

On  Jane's  accomphshments  her  relatives  are  not 
insistent.  She  is  said  to  have  excelled  in  needlework 
and  in  penmanship,  and  her  skill  in  games  was  the 
despair  of  her  childish  antagonists  and  imitators. 
Her  fondness  for  art  was  not  immoderate.  Drawing 
as  a  drawing-room  appurtenance  or,  to  put  the  case 
a  httle  differently,  the  pencil  as  one  of  the  blunter 
shafts  in  Cupid's  quiver,  is  sparingly  visible  in  her 
novels;  but  her  remark  in  a  letter  that  in  an  art 
gallery  the  spectators  diverted  her  attention  from 
the  pictures  is  instructive  to  the  perspicacious.  The 
woman  who  would  read  Southey's  Lije  of  Nelson,  if 
it  mentioned  her  brother  Frank,  would  naturally 


194  JANE  AUSTEN 

find  the  chief  interest  of  an  exhibition  in  a  small 
portrait  of  Mrs.  Bingley.  Something  is  said  of  a 
sweet  voice  and  of  practice  on  the  pianoforte,  but 
Jane's  own  repudiation  of  musical  taste  was  en- 
joyably  robust.  She  says  of  a  popular  singer : ' '  That 
she  gave  me  no  pleasure  is  no  reflection  upon  her, 
nor,  I  hope,  upon  myself,  being  what  Nature  made 
me  in  that  article."  She  has  an  undisguised  fond- 
ness for  persons  whose  impatience  of  music  is  un- 
disguised. ''I  hked  her  for  being  in  a  hurry  to  have 
the  concert  over  and  get  away."  Apparently,  she 
went  Uttle  to  the  theatre,  and  she  certainly  had  not 
the  temper  of  the  true  theatre-goer  for  whom  the 
calamity  of  being  disappointed  of  a  play  far  out- 
weighs the  mere  misfortune  of  being  disappointed 
in  one.  Kean,  then  in  his  first  glory,  entirely  con- 
quers her,  but  the  other  actors  are  put  off  with  res- 
ervations and  tepidities. 

Neither  the  letters  nor  the  biographies  support 
the  idea  that  Miss  Austen  was  a  systematic  or  sed- 
ulous reader.  Hours  of  reading  are  scantly  noted, 
and  hours  for  reading  belong  to  a  world  into  which 
her  cautious  imagination  never  peeped.  She  read 
what  fell  in  her  way,  or  what  the  easy  standards 
of  a  considerate  world  imposed  upon  a  clergyman's 
daughter.  She  speaks  once  of  her  "dear  Dr.  John- 
son," and  a  jocular  project  of  mamage  with  George 
Crabbe,  whom  she  sincerely  and  appropriately  ad- 
mired, was  shadowed  by  a  doubt  as  to  the  existence  of 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  195 

a  vacancy.  She  seems  to  have  hked  Cowper,  though 
the  line  which  haunted  Fanny  Price  in  her  Ports- 
mouth exile,  "With  what  intense  desire  she  wants 
her  home,"  is  surely  as  pedestrian  a  line  as  ever  cum- 
bered the  remembrance  of  a  lover  of  poetry.  An- 
other phrase  of  Cowper's  about  ''syringa  ivory 
pure"  does  more  credit  both  to  poet  and  reader. 
She  reads  Scott's  poems  as  they  emerge.  In  June, 
1808,  she  is  still  unconverted  by  Marmion,  but  in 
January,  1809,  she  has  reached  the  point  of  admir- 
ing her  own  generosity  in  despatching  her  copy  to 
her  brother  Charles.  She  is  rather  captious  with 
Scott.  "Walter  Scott  has  no  business  to  write  novels, 
especially  good  ones.  It  is  not  fair.  He  has  fame 
and  profit  enough  as  a  poet,  and  should  not  be  taking 
the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  other  people."  ''I 
do  not  Hke  him,  and  do  not  mean  to  like  Waverley 
if  I  can  help  it,  but  fear  I  must." 

The  above  passage  is  charmingly  illustrative  of  a 
certain  flexibility  in  Miss  Austen's  temper,  which  is 
often  more  or  less  concealed  by  the  positiveness 
of  her  language.  She  had  a  woman's  playful  self- 
will,  but  even  in  the  heyday  and  riot  of  her  caprice 
she  foresees  its  final  subjection  to  a  mascuHne  equity. 
She  has  all  manner  of  unreasoned  dislikes,  which 
she  relinquishes  with  the  most  admirable  candor  and 
the  most  engaging  reluctance. 

To  resume  the  topic  from  which  I  was  lured  away 
by  the  tempting  observation  in  the  last   paragraph, 


196  JANE  AUSTEN 

Jane  remarked  once  not  over-seriously  that  she  had 
made  up  her  mind  to  hke  no  novels  really  but  Miss 
Edgeworth's,  her  niece's,  and  her  own.  According 
to  her  nephew,  her  knowledge  of  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son  was  minute,  an  assertion  which  has  two  refer- 
ences to  Harriet  Byron  in  the  letters  on  its  side,  but 
which  I  illogically  decline  to  beUeve,  with  that  faith 
in  my  unfaith  which  is  one  of  the  curious  tattooings 
of  human  nature.  She  says  once  to  her  sister,  in 
allusion  to  Miss  Burney's  Cecilia,  ''Remember  that 
Aunt  Cassandras  are  quite  as  scarce  as  Miss  Bever- 
leys."  She  recommends  Corinna  to  a  certain  deaf 
Mr.  Fitzhugh,  but  there  is  no  evidence  in  the  cor- 
respondence that  her  acquaintance  with  French 
belles-letters  was  more  than  respectable  in  amount 
or  less  than  respectable  in  quahty.  Fielding  is  too 
much  the  stable-boy  for  her  taste.  She  knew  the 
Spectator  and  its  progeny,  and  drew  her  history,  no 
doubt  in  circumspect  amounts,  from  the  approved 
founts  of  Goldsmith,  Hume,  and  Robertson.  When 
she  undertakes  to  read  Modern  Europe  with  her 
niece  Fanny,  something  always  occurs  to  delay  or 
curtail  the  proposed  reading.  The  discomfiture 
of  plans  of  this  kind  for  self-culture  is  among  the 
favorite  recreations  of  destiny. 

One  instinctively  trusts  Miss  Austen's  criticism 
of  novels,  even  where  one's  ignorance  of  the  book  in 
question  is  complete.  Nothing  could  be  more  un- 
assun^ing,  nothing  could  be  less  responsible  or  judi- 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  197 

cial,  than  these  criticisms,  yet  we  feel  a  basic,  an 
involuntary,  equipoise  which  no  wiKulness  or  sub- 
jectivity in  the  critic's  conscious  attitude  could  de- 
range. The  letters  to  her  niece  Anna  on  Anna's 
unpubUshed  novel  contain  remarks  which  in  their 
unconfirmed  sanity  are  so  convincing  that  verifica- 
tion, if  verification  were  feasible,  would  seem  almost 
an  impertinence. 

There  are  allusions  to  chestnut-planting  in  Miss 
Austen's  letters,  and  mention  is  made  of  two  roots  of 
heart's  ease,  '^one  yellow  and  one  purple,"  the  refer- 
ences to  which  in  my  note-book  are  characteristic- 
ally flanked  by  two  other  references,  one  to  ''aspar- 
agus, lobster  and  cheese"  and  the  other  to  "ten  pair 
of  worsted  stockings  and  a  shift."  It  is  nature 
drafted  into  the  service  of  man,  nature  as  the  orna- 
ment and  instrument  of  a  vicarage,  that  is  brought 
before  us  in  scant  and  scattering  allusion  in  these 
letters.  In  the  novels  the  situation  is  not  so  very 
different,  but  a  distinction  must  be  made  between 
the  earher  group  of  novels  from  which  nature  is 
practically  excluded  and  the  later  group  in  which 
like  a  well-bred  villager  she  is  allowed  at  cautious 
intervals  to  make  a  modest  courtesy  to  her  betters. 
In  Mansfield  Park  a  sentence  or  two  here  and  there 
makes  a  rather  formal,  but  not  ungraceful  or  in- 
sincere, mention  of  Fanny  Price's  interest  in  spring, 
and  in  Persuasion  matters  are  so  far  advanced  that 
a  whole  paragraph — almost  a  whole  paragraph — is 


198  JANE  AUSTEN 

squandered  on  the  charms  of  Lyme.  The  advance  is 
readily  expUcable.  Between  Sense  and  Sensibility 
and  Persuasion  nature  had  "come  out."  She  had 
not  only  received  the  solemn  vouchers  of  that  socially 
questionable  preacher  and  hermit,  WiUiam  Words- 
worth, but  the  ban  of  rusticity  had  been  finally 
lifted  by  the  patronage  of  Walter  Scott  and  Lord 
Byron.  Miss  Austen  was  bom  too  early  to  have  an 
articulate  feeling  for  nature;  not  too  early  in  time, 
for  she  was  arithmetically  younger  than  Scott  or 
Wordsworth,  but  in  time  as  related  to  scant  educa- 
tion and  unhterary  surroundings.  The  love  of  na- 
ture has  its  own  springtime  in  the  centuries:  when 
Miss  Austen  began  to  write,  the  frost  was  not  yet 
out  of  the  ground;  at  the  date  of  Persuasion  it  was 
too  late  to  plant  a  garden. 

Mr.  Howells,  in  an  Easy-Chair  paper,  has  spoken 
of  the  kind  conscience  and  the  tender  affection  of 
Miss  Austen,  and  goes  on  to  draw  a  picture  of  ami- 
able self-dedication  to  the  interests  of  friends  and 
kinsfolk  at  which,  I  think,  Jane  Austen  would  have 
smiled.  Jane's  affections  in  certain  quarters,  par- 
ticularly toward  her  sister  and  brothers  and  their 
descendants,  were  real  and  deep — were  m  fact  the 
stuff  and  fibre  of  her  hfe,  but  a  robustness  which 
abjured  sentimentahty  and  almost  banished  senti- 
ment was  their  sanative  and  fortifying  property. 
Her  friends  outside  of  the  family  were  apparently 
few,  and  she  seems  to  have  conformed  to  that  very 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  199 

human,  if  also  rather  barbarous,  custom  which 
soHdifies  friendships  by  the  dismemberment  of  ac- 
quaintance. In  the  raids  which  Jane  made  upon  a 
defenseless  society  the  booty,  as  the  following  pas- 
sage from  the  letters  will  clearly  show,  was  consider- 
able. 

There  were  very  few  beauties,  and  such  as  there  were,  were 
not  very  handsome.  Miss  Iremonger  did  not  look  well,  and  Mrs. 
Blount  was  the  only  one  much  admired.  She  appeared  exactly 
as  she  did  in  September,  with  the  same  broad  face,  diamond 
bandeau,  white  shoes,  pink  husband,  and  fat  neck.  The  two 
Miss  Coxes  were  there :  I  traced  in  one  the  remains  of  the  vulgar, 
broad-featured  girl  who  danced  at  Enham  eight  years  ago;  the 
other  is  refined  into  a  nice  composed-looking  girl,  like  Catherine 
Bigg.  I  looked  at  Sir  Thomas  Champneys  and  thought  of  poor 
RosaUe;  I  looked  at  his  daughter,  and  thought  her  a  queer 
animal  with  a  white  neck.  Mrs.  Warren,  I  was  constrained  to 
think  a  very  fine  young  woman,  which  I  much  regret.  She 
danced  away  with  great  activity.  Her  husband  is  ugly  enough, 
uglier  even  than  his  cousin  John;  but  he  does  not  look  so  very  old. 
The  Miss  Maitlands  are  both  prettyish,  very  like  Anne,  with 
brown  skins,  large  dark  eyes,  and  a  good  deal  of  nose.  _The 
General  has  got  the  gout,  and  Mrs.  Maitland  the  jaundice.  Miss 
Debary,  Susan,  and  Sally,  all  in  black,  but  without  any  statues, 
made  their  appearance,  and  I  was  as  civil  to  them  as  circum- 
stances would  allow  me.  j 

This  passage,  in  which,  at  times,  humanity  seems 
viewed  almost  as  meat,  has  its  pabulum  for  the  most 
obsequious  biographer.  Miss  Austen  did  not  live  to 
see  the  pubhcation  of  Vanity  Fair.  But  had  fate 
indulged  her  to  that  extent,  I  doubt  if  she  would  have 
felt  any  rancor  toward  that  other  maiden  aunt  who 


200  JANE  AUSTEN 

remarked  after  a  dinner:  ''Come  to  my  dressing- 
room,  Becky,  and  let  us  abuse  the  company."  The 
state  of  the  case  is  fairly  clear.  Miss  Austen's  de- 
mands were  rather  exigent;  the  society  in  which  she 
moved  was  apparently  a  jumble;  and  the  satirist  in 
her  clamored  for  his  rations.  Jane's  compassion 
would  not  allow  him  to  go  hungry.  Her  candor  does 
not  blench  at  the  sight  of  a  tombstone.  Mrs.  W.  K. 
is  just  dead,  and  Jane  had  no  idea  that  anybody 
liked  her,  and  proceeds  forthwith  to  the  choice  of  a 
successor.  In  those  days  there  was  apparently  a 
great  deal  of  perfunctory  mourning  balanced  by  a 
great  deal  of  spontaneous  persiflage.  We  are  told  of 
"a  gentleman  in  a  buggy,  who,  on  minute  examina- 
tion, turned  out  to  be  Dr.  Hall — and  Dr.  Hall  in 
such  very  deep  mourning  that  either  his  mother,  his 
wife,  or  himself  must  be  dead."  With  many  persons 
a  bad  cough  means  a  truce  to  asperities  or  jocularities 
in  relation  to  the  sufferer.  Jane  writes  in  this  fash- 
ion: "My  aunt  has  a  very  bad  cough — do  not  forget 
to  have  heard  about  that  when  you  come — and  I 
think  she  is  deafer  than  ever." 

In  writing  to  Cassandra  Jane  Austen  remarks: 
"A  better  account  of  the  sugar  than  I  could  have  ex- 
pected. I  should  like  to  have  you  break  some  more." 
I  think  Jane's  benevolence  was  a  hard  sugar,  the 
loaf  or  block  sugar  of  former  days,  so  hard  that  it 
needed  crushers  or  solvents  to  convince  the  tongue 
of  its  obdurate  sweetness.     She  was  no  person  to 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  201 

take  the  world  into  her  lap.  She  scarcely  fondled 
even  her  relatives.  Her  love  for  Cassandra  had  a 
beauty  to  which  the  ugly  and  the  pretty  would 
have  been  almost  equally  antithetic.  If  she  sends 
"infinities  of  love,"  the  hyperbole  comports  itself 
hke  a  memorandum.  She  does  once  exclaim : ' '  Sweet, 
amiable  Frank,"  but  adds:  "Why  does  he  have  a  cold 
too?  "  For  colds  the  use  of  sirups  is  notorious.  The 
general  absence  of  criticism  of  her  own  family  is  re- 
markable in  a  person  of  quick  eyesight  and  brusque 
tongue.  Jane  Austen  liked  her  lot  in  life,  and  that 
hfe  was  mostly  kinsfolk;  hers  was  the  temper  for 
which  the  donnee  in  the  dapper  parlance  of  criticism 
or  the  deal  in  the  homeUer  language  of  the  card- 
table  was  final  and  authoritative. 

I  think  it  was  this  quiet  finaUty  in  the  acceptance 
of  current  restraints  that  made  Jane  Austen's  moral 
life  at  the  same  time  impeccable  and  vacant.  Her 
letters  never  show  the  sUghtest  moral  agitation,  the 
shghtest  moral  difficulty.  There  is  no  record  of  a 
duty  arduous  enough  to  make  its  fulfilment  ex- 
hilarating, of  a  rebeUion  strong  enough  to  make  its 
chastisement  dramatic.  For  Jane  Austen  the  divi- 
ding line  in  conduct  ran  rather  between  sense  and 
folly  than  between  good  and  evil,  and  the  very  titles 
of  her  novels  are  advertisements  of  her  adhesion  to 
this  view.  The  lesson  of  Serise  and  Sensibility  is 
clearly  prudential,  and  Pride  and  Prejudice  is  ob- 
viously a  rebuke  to  the  indiscretions  rather  than 


202  JANE  AUSTEN 

sins  which  are  held  up  to  disapproval  in  its  allitera- 
tive and  pedagogic  title.  There  is  guilt  as  well  as 
folly  in  both  novels,  but  the  object  is  evidently  not 
to  put  virtue  into  immoral  Willoughbys  and  Wick- 
hams,  but  sense  into  thoughtless  Lydias  and  Mari- 
annes. The  wolf  is  assumed  to  be  incorrigible,  but  we 
must  do  what  we  can  for  Red  Ridinghood.  Miss 
Austen,  in  this  point,  has  a  certain  affinity  with 
MoHere,  whose  Tartuffe,  to  furnish  only  one  example, 
exposes  the  hypocrites  in  the  endeavor  to  instruct 
the  dupes.  In  Northanger  Abbey  folly — ^romantic 
folly — is  again  the  object  of  reproof;  the  conversion 
of  the  Isabella  Thorpes  in  England  is  plainly  not  the 
incentive  to  the  recital  of  Isabella's  perfidy.  In 
Mansfield  Park  the  references  to  morality  are  em- 
phatic, but  the  exciting  cause  is  that  participation  of 
a  few  intimate  friends  in  strictly  private  theatricals 
in  which  the  reader  of  our  own  day  could  hardly  be 
coaxed  into  perceiving  even  an  imprudence.  The 
moral  of  Emma  is  impUcit  in  the  following  words: 
''The  real  evils  of  Emma's  situation  were  the  power 
of  having  rather  too  much  of  her  own  way,  and  a 
disposition  to  think  too  well  of '  herself.' "  Persuasion 
illustrates  the  folly  of  hstening  too  meekly  to  the 
counsels  of  your  elders  in  affairs  of  the  heart. 

Miss  Austen  assumed  virtue  to  be  normal  and 
prevalent,  and  vice,  where  it  showed  itself,  to  be 
practically  beyond  cure.  Her  attitude  toward 
reprobates  is  by  no  means  unindulgent;  she  endows 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  203 

them  liberally  with  attractions,  and  allows  her 
virtuous  EUnor  Dashwoods,  Ehzabeth  Bennets,  and 
Anne  EUiots  to  quahfy  their  disapprobations  with 
curious,  though  half  reluctant,  lenities.  I  think  that 
the  daughter  of  the  vicar  of  Steventon  felt  toward 
these  gay  Lotharios  very  much  as  that  other  em- 
inently respectable  person,  the  sheriff  of  Selkirk,  felt 
toward  the  Roderic  Dhus  and  Bertrams,  the  Rob 
Roys  and  Redgauntlets,  with  whom  he  blackened 
and  brightened  his  romantic  pages.  I  suspect  that 
in  Jane's  world  virtue,  as  virtue  was  understood,  was 
so  plentiful,  and  sensible  and  agreeable  people  were 
so  relatively  few  that  she  had  a  difficulty  in  re- 
nouncing the  latter  on  account  of  their  insufficiency 
in  the  point  of  morals. 

It  is  unlikely  that  ideas  of  this  sort  ever  influenced 
Miss  Austen's  conduct,  but  their  very  failure  to 
affect  her  conduct  may  have  strengthened  their  hold 
upon  her  feehngs.  ''Ehza  has  seen  Lord  Craven  at 
Barton.  .  .  .  She  found  his  manners  very  pleasing 
indeed.  The  httle  flaw  of  having  a  mistress  now 
hving  with  him  at  Ashdown  Park  seems  to  be  the 
only  unpleasing  circumstance  about  him."  The 
''httle"  is  irony  beyond  a  doubt,  but  irony  in  such  a 
case  is  leniency;  manners  are  powerful  with  women, 
especially  where  they  are  scarce,  and  the  Lovelaces 
of  the  period  no  doubt  found  their  stoutest  alfies  in 
the  boorish  Solmeses  who  posed  as  competitors. 
Here  are  a  few  remarks  on  a  certain  Mr.  Lushington: 


204  JANE  AUSTEN 

"He  is  quite  an  M.  P.,  very  smiling,  with  an  exceed- 
ing good  address  and  readiness  of  language.  I  am 
rather  in  love  with  him.  I  dare  say  he  is  ambitious 
and  insincere."  Apart  from  her  serious  and  loyal 
family  life  the  social  world — the  httle  world  in  which, 
as  appearances  are  the  reahties,  so  manners  are  the 
virtues — was  Jane's  world. 

If  in  Jane  Austen's  life  morahty  is  tacit,  rehgion, 
at  least  rehgious  feeling,  is  practically  null.  Allu- 
sions even  to  the  apparel  and  process  of  rehgion  are 
comparatively  scant;  church-going  is  rarely  men- 
tioned and  never  stressed;  she  is  pleased  once  that 
two  headstrong  young  nephews  have  taken  the 
sacrament.  Except  in  formal  phrases  like  "God 
bless  you,"  the  name  of  God  scarcely  occurs  in  the 
correspondence.  Plainly  we  have  here  to  deal  with 
an  unpresuming  divinity,  a  modest  and  circumspect 
Providence,  who  never  oversteps  the  limits  assigned 
to  his  function  by  the  foresight  of  a  judicious  estab- 
Hshment.  Jane  was  a  decent,  docile,  worldly  woman 
by  whom  the  paternal  cult  was  accepted  without  a 
shadow  of  question,  an  atom  of  feehng,  or  a  trace  of 
display.  It  required  no  urgency  to  induce  her  to 
respect  an  institution  to  which  so  many  exemplary 
relatives  were  indebted  for  their  sustenance. 

In  /Sense  and  Sensibility  the  entrance  of  a  young 
man  into  holy  orders  as  the  prelude  and  stepping- 
stone  to  his  entrance  into  the  substantial  and  in- 
teresting state  of  matrimony  is  accepted  by  Miss 


LIFE  AND  WAYS  OF  LIFE  205 

Austen  with  a  wholeheartedness  which  forestalls 
indorsement,  and  not  a  drop  of  ink  is  wasted  in 
condonation  of  the  young  man's  total  want  of 
rehgious  feeling  or  vocation.  Even  the  admirable 
Edmund  Bertram,  in  the  very  act  of  rebuking  the 
levities  of  the  worldly  Miss  Crawford,  calmly  ad- 
mits that  his  father's  control  of  a  desirable  Hving  had 
influenced  his  decision  to  enter  the  church.  Why 
not?  He  really  likes  the  church.  One  recalls  a 
satirical  gibe  of  Miss  Austen's  to  the  effect  that  all 
heiresses  are  beautiful.  In  the  earher  and  cruder 
legends  of  the  Holy  Grail  that  vessel  was  often 
called  on  to  provide  corporal  sustenance  for  com- 
panies of  devout  and  starving  people.  I  am  sure  the 
arrangement  commended  itself  to  the  Jane  Austens 
of  that  artless  day.  Singular  combinations  whisk 
themselves  in  and  out  of  these  gay  and  caustic 
letters.  "Mr.  Brecknell  is  very  rehgious,  and  has 
got  black  whiskers." 

I  cannot  but  feel  regret  that  the  absence  of  reh- 
gious feeling  and  of  poetical  feeling  in  Jane  Austen's 
constitution  should  have  been  equal  and  parallel.  As 
Mr.  George  Santayana  has  shown,  poetry  and 
rehgion  have  latent  affinities,  and  often  minister 
kindred  nutriment  in  diverse  forms  to  unlike  spirits. 
The  removal  of  both  is  a  source  of  aridity. 


CHAPTER    X 

LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS 

I  THINK  it  well  at  this  point  to  gather  up  the 
limitations  noted  in  the  last  chapter,  and  to  add  a 
few  others  so  obvious  as  to  require  no  proof.  That 
Jane  Austen's  field  was  restricted  her  very  idolaters 
admit,  but  the  extent  of  that  restriction  can  be 
reahzed  only  by  a  summary  of  the  particulars. 
Certain  elements  in  the  novel  have  arisen  since  her 
day,  and  to  note  their  absence  in  her  work  is  de- 
marcation, not  disparagement.  It  would  be  equally 
silly  and  captious  to  blame  Miss  Austen  for  not  deal- 
ing in  politics  with  Mrs.  Hiunphry  Ward,  in  sexual 
adjustments  with  Madame  Sarah  Grand,  in  artistic 
endeavor  with  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton,  or  in  spiritistic 
phenomena  with  Miss  E.  S.  Phelps,  now  Mrs.  Ward. 
The  blamelessness  of  the  restriction,  however,  does 
not  in  the  least  contract  its  area.  The  next  great 
curtailment  of  material  relates  to  a  pomt  in  which  her 
acquittal  must  be  equally  complete,  if  not  equally 
rapid.  She  cannot  be  blamed  for  not  forestalling 
George  Sand  or  Charlotte  Bronte  in  the  field  of  labor 
difficulties  or  economic  readjustments,  though  in 
her  own  day  a  woman  whom  she  greatly  admired  was 
already  beckoning  fiction  to  this  laborious  and  hardy 

206 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  207 

enterprise  in  Castle  Rackrent.  These  things  did  not 
lie  in  Jane  Austen's  way,  and  forbearance  was 
sagacity. 

Miss  Austen's  forbearances,  however,  did  not  stop 
at  things  that  lay  outside  her  path.  Landscape  was 
certainly  a  part  of  her  experience,  and  its  treatment 
in  fiction  would  not  have  been  anomalous  or  hazard- 
ous in  a  successor  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  Yet  landscape 
is  barely  visible,  and  is  anything  but  influential  in 
Miss  Austen's  work.  Again,  the  physical  frame  and 
process  of  life,  its  food,  drink,  clothes,  lodging,  and 
conveyance,  was  exposed  to  her  view;  her  letters 
show  that  her  grasp  of  this  material  was  robust;  and 
the  few  touches  of  this  kind  which  are  sparingly  and 
cautiously  admitted  into  her  novels  are  of  a  vivid- 
ness which  sharpens  our  regret  for  their  infrequency. 
This  was  not  aUen  groimd  on  which  she  declined  to 
trespass;  it  was  ground  of  her  own  which  she  refused 
to  cultivate. 

She  confined  herself,  again,  to  what  might  be 
called,  a  httle  loosely,  one  social  class,  the  educated 
class  which  includes  the  landowners  and  the  profes- 
sional men,  and  which,  even  when  it  bewails  its 
poverty,  keeps  servants  and  horses  as  guarantees  of 
caste.  Miss  Austen's  likeness  to  Thackeray  and 
divergence  from  Thackeray  in  this  point  are  both 
significant.  Thackeray's  world,  like  hers,  is  genteel, 
but  is  widened  by  the  inclusion  of  nobles,  and,  more 
profitably  and  notably,  by  the  welcome  bestowed  on 


208  JANE  AUSTEN 

those  persons  who,  in  the  form  of  chrect  service  or 
purvey orship,  are  adjacent  and  subjacent  to  the 
propertied  and  educated  folk.  The  plebs  has  only 
to  put  on  a  hvery  in  order  to  find  instant  and  cordial 
admission  to  the  pages  of  the  creator  of  IVIr.  Jeames 
Yellowplush.  But  even  this  passport  is  ineffectual 
in  the  fiction  of  Jane  Austen.  That  she  could  have 
handled  this  class  with  fideUty  and  force  is  suffi- 
ciently evinced  by  her  success  in  the  treatment  of 
analogous  material  in  the  Portsmouth  episode  in 
Mansfield  Park,  although  she  traverses  these  sordid 
alleys  in  her  manorial  work  with  an  apparent  eleva- 
tion both  of  skirt  and  nostril  which  I  hesitate  to 
accept  as  characteristic  of  her  mind.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  Miss  Austen  has  again  made  a  large  sacrifice  of 
available  and  profitable  material. 

Once  more,  it  is  very  curious  that  Miss  Austen 
should  not  have  anticipated  Louisa  Alcott  and  Mrs. 
Whitney  in  the  emphasis  they  gave  to  that  domes- 
ticity which  plays  in  Miss  Austen's  novels  a  part  so 
grossly,  almost  ludicrously,  disproportionate  to  the 
part  it  played  in  her  own  life.  Her  love  for  Cassandi'a 
was  probably  her  great  experience,  but  the  loves  of 
Elinor  and  Marianne,  of  Jane  and  EUzabeth,  tender 
and  touching  as  they  undoubtedly  ai-e,  ai-e  portrayed 
in  a  subordination  to  courtship  which  seems  to  have 
been  viewed  as  inevitable  and  final.  The  affection 
between  William  and  Fanny  Price  affords  a  juster 
version  of  the  compass  of  such  relations  m  her  own 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  209 

life,  but  at  Mansfield  that  affection  is  scarcely 
domestic,  and  the  space  it  receives  is  scarcely  Uberal. 
It  is  remarkable  that  Jane  Austen  never  drew  a 
child;  the  young  Prices  or  Middletons  or  Musgroves 
cannot  be  said  to  be  drawn.  These  young  persons 
might  be  thought  to  intimate  and  to  justify  a  dislike 
of  children,  but  the  letters  show  conclusively  that 
Jane  did  not  dislike  children  as  a  class,  and,  besides, 
dislike  never  debarred  its  object  from  her  novels. 

Other  renunciations,  already  touched,  must  be 
included  in  our  summary.  If  Miss  Austen  could  not 
be  modern  with  the  modernists,  there  seems  no 
reason  why  she  should  not  have  been  ethical  with 
Miss  Bronte  or  George  Ehot,  or  rehgious  with  the 
upholders  of  Anglican  piety  in  fiction.  We  have 
seen  that  she  put  sense  in  the  place  of  ethics,  and  as 
to  religion  the  taboo  excluded  not  only  the  feelings, 
which  are  clearly  not  open  to  everybody,  but  even 
the  social  or  pubHc  phenomena,  the  services,  the 
obligations,  everything  pretty  much  except  the 
clergymen,  from  whom,  as  she  unerringly  divined, 
the  worldhness  of  the  worldUest  novel  had  nothing 
to  dread. 

Let  us  now  summarize  our  summary.  In  the 
novels  of  Jane  Austen  there  is  no  pohtics,  no  literary 
or  aesthetic  Ufe,  no  supematurahsm  (though  this  is 
not  significant) ,  no  sex-radicahsm,  no  class  problems, 
almost  no  landscape,  almost  nothing  of  the  corpus 
or  physical  order  of  life,  no  low-life  portraits,  scant 


210  JANE  AUSTEN 

domesticity,  no  moral  experience,  no  vestige  of 
religious  sentiment.  I  doubt  if  any  such  concourse  of 
negatives,  any  such  wealth  of  privations,  can  be 
attributed  to  any  other  noveUst  of  superlative 
capacity.  One  asks  in  stupefaction:  What  is  left? 
what  did  she  find  to  paint?  To  which  it  might  be 
concisely  rephed :  She  painted  courtship  in  the  upper 
middle  class  and  minor  gentry. 

Like  most  condensations,  this  simplifies  too  much. 
Other  topics  find  a  place  in  Miss  Austen.  The 
cupidities  of  the  Dashwoods,  the  servihties  of  Mr. 
Collins,  the  quahnishness  of  Mr.  Woodhouse,  the 
loquacity  of  Miss  Bates,  the  coxcombry  of  Sir  Walter 
ElUot,  the  nightmares  of  Catherine  Morland,  are  not 
courtship,  but  they  are  all  episodic  or  ancillary 
matters,  admitted  as  small  contributions,  or  in- 
dulged as  passing  interruptions,  of  narratives  whose 
substance  is  courtship.  Of  the  treatment  of  love  I 
shall  speak  briefly  in  the  sequel;  for  the  rest  it  suffices 
for  the  moment  to  remark  that  success  in  fiction  is 
not  an  appanage  to  range,  and  that  Miss  Austen's 
ownership  of  the  two  master  faculties  of  humor  and 
characterization  at  once  lowers  tliis  want  of  compass 
into  the  class  of  secondary  though  far  from  neghgible 
limitations. 

One  offset  to  this  narrowness  is  found  in  a  trait  to 
the  right  perception  and  valuation  of  which  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  a  knowledge  of  the  Letters  is 
indispensable.     The  trait  is  powerful  but  tacit  in 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  211 

the  novels;  it  is  powerful  and  audible  in  the  Letters; 
and  it  is  only  an  ear  that  the  Letters  have  trained  to 
alertness  that  can  recognize  its  full  authority  and 
virtue  in  the  fictions.  The  trait  might  be  called  in- 
cisiveness  or  robustness,  but,  if  allowed  my  choice,  I 
should  willingly  name  it  downrightness,  which,  with 
forthrightness  as  its  tool  and  uprightness  as  its  sup- 
port, makes  the  Letters  interesting  even  when  they 
are  trivial  and  authoritative  even  when  they  are 
capricious.  The  reason  why  the  effect  is  less  in- 
stantly perceptible  in  the  fictions  must  be  sought  in 
the  veneer  of  abstraction  with  which  the  concrete 
substance  of  the  novels  is  tiresomely  overlaid.  She 
was  bom  to  write  books  that  should  have  closed  with 
life  in  the  hand-to-hand  encounter  of  Turgenieff  or 
Verga;  but  the  fashion  of  her  day  favored  combat  at 
long  range,  and,  in  form  at  least,  she  was  not  rebel- 
hous  to  the  fashion.  Her  nature,  however,  asserted 
itself  even  in  its  plasticities,  and  the  reader  felt  the 
picture  even  through  the  curtain  of  abstraction,  as  a 
man  divines  the  warmth  of  a  friend's  hand  even 
through  the  glove  in  which  the  rigor  of  fashion  obhges 
him  to  muffle  it.  The  effect  is  seized  in  the  vigor  of 
the  concrete  strokes  with  which  the  rational  and 
bodiless  narrative  is  so  sparsely  punctuated. 

In  the  Letters,  however,  the  quahty  is  revealed  in 
its  fulness.  ''He  touched  nothing  that  he  did  not 
adorn,"  was  said  of  one  writer;  of  Miss  Austen  in  her 
letters  it  may  be  said  that  she  touches  nothing  that 


212  JANE  AUSTEN 

she  does  not  indent.  They  are  not  written,  but 
stamped;  they  remind  us  of  the  Journal  to  Stella  and 
of  the  more  varied,  but  in  parts  equally  homely, 
letters  of  that  other  tersely  pungent  Jane,  Mrs. 
Carlyle.  There  is  a  disinfectant,  antiseptic  quahty 
in  this  downrightness  which  operates  in  several  cura- 
tive ways.  If  Jane  Austen  has  dehcacies,  they  are 
of  a  granular  type  healthily  remote  from  that  pasti- 
ness which  often  makes  deUcacy  indehcate.  If  she 
sends  affectionate  messages,  they  are  not  the  dribble 
or  drivel  which  such  things  are  prone  to  become  on 
the  pen  of  the  womanly  woman;  her  ''Yours  affec- 
tionately's,"  are  not  saccharine  and  her  *'God  bless 
you's  "  are  not  unctuous.  If  she  uses  a  pretentious 
phrase  such  as  ''her  sister  in  Lucina,"  the  smart 
blow  of  the  little  tackhammer  with  which  she  drives 
it  in  redeems  it  from  all  ineptitude.  Her  very  affecta- 
tions, which  are  very  few,  have  the  carriage  of  na- 
ture. What  could  be  worse  on  general  principles 
than  phrases  of  this  kind,  both  by  an  odd  chance  on 
the  same  page:  "The  Lances  with  whose  cards  we 
have  been  endowed";  and  "whether  she  boasts  any 
offspring  besides  a  grand  pianoforte"?  Yet  these 
things  are — I  will  not  say  pleasant — but  endurable 
in  Jane  Austen.  Her  robustness  has  a  cathartic  effect 
even  on  the  gossip  of  which  the  supply  in  the  letters 
is  inexhaustible.  It  is  a  straightforward  and  unem- 
barrassed gossip,  of  semi-masculine  quality,  writ- 
ten— I  speak  in  symboUc  terms — in  a  bold  hand 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  213 

without  underscorings  or  interlineations.  Lastly,  I 
know  no  one  more  obedient  or  less  servile  to  conven- 
tion; in  her  conformities  she  appears  to  ratify  quite 
as  much  as  to  submit. 

This  temperamental  virtue  by  which  the  letters  so 
signally  profited  was  beneficial  to  the  novels  in  two 
great  points  the  treatment  of  which  has  been  thus 
far  scanted  or  postponed.  They  are  humor  and  the 
portrayal  of  love — the  two  things  which  have  ex- 
tended Miss  Austen's  popularity.  Miss  Austen  is  an 
eminent  novelist  because  of  her  truth;  she  is  a 
popular  novelist  because  she  possessed  a  delectable 
humor  and  because  she  portrayed  love  with  vigor  and 
pertinacity.  So  far  as  the  major  pubhc  goes,  the 
readers  who  like  Miss  Austen  for  her  faithfulness  to 
nature  are  the  cousins  or  possibly  the  descendants  of 
those  paragons  who  read  historical  novels  for  the 
sake  of  the  history.  The  enjoyment  of  truth  is 
highly  respectable,  and  if  one  has  the  luck  to  enjoy  a 
truth-teUing  writer,  the  association  of  the  two  facts  is 
irresistible  to  vanity.  Everything  is  assigned  to  the 
credit  of  truth,  because  the  reader  is  a  partaker  in  that 
credit,  and  truth,  I  regret  to  say,  is  hypocrite  enough 
to  accept  the  praise  for  victories  in  which  the  real  con- 
queror was  personahty  or  vigor.  I  am  far  from  saying 
that  there  is  not  much  reahsm  both  in  Miss  Austen's 
humor  and  in  her  love :  but  neither  shows  her  truth  in 
its  purity;  the  admixture  of  burlesque  in  the  one  case, 
of  convention  in  the  other,  was  considerable. 


214  JANE  AUSTEN 

I  wish  neither  to  delay  nor  quaUfy  the  wiUing 
avowal  that  I  hold  Miss  Austen's  humor  m  high 
esteem.  It  is  less  the  viand  than  the  service,  less  the 
ingenuity  of  the  combination  than  the  perfection  of 
its  dehvery,  that  hberates  and  quickens  admiration. 
The  good  jest  is  that  which  keeps  its  incognito  best 
and  longest,  which  beUes  and  disowns  itself — which, 
in  a  homeher  figure,  avoids  leakage.  Miss  Austen's 
humor  is  water-tight,  and  the  neatness  of  joinery 
which  the  adjective  imphes  is  one  of  its  most  winning 
characteristics.  The  virtue  is  largely  in  style  and 
tone.  I  have  a  feehng— which  is  more,  I  hope,  than  a 
fancy— that  the  style  is  unusually  good  when  its 
freightage  is  a  joke.  In  such  cases  Miss  Austen  em- 
ploys effectively  what  I  shall  venture  to  call  her 
legal  manner.  I  quote  again  the  opening  sentence  of 
Pride  and  Prejudice:  "It  is  a  truth  universally  ac- 
knowledged, that  a  single  man  in  possession  of  a 
good  fortime  must  be  in  want  of  a  wife."  Does  not 
one  savor  a  "Be  it  known  unto  all  men  by  these 
presents"  in  the  modulation  of  that  austerely  pun- 
gent sentence? 

Again,  the  tone  of  the  humorous  expression  is  all 
that  one  could  ask.  I  will  resist  the  temptation  to 
say  that  it  is  the  very  best  tone  to  be  found  in  Eng- 
Ush  humor;  when  a  critic's  mind  is  strongly  on  one 
object  and  faintly  or  vaguely  on  many  others,  the 
detection  of  superiorities  is  facile.  Miss  Austen's 
humor  is  not  arch  or  sly  or  magnetic  or  exuberant, 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  215 

and  all  these  moods  have  their  fascination.  In  Miss 
Austen  the  pointed  merit  is  a  cogency  which  is  the 
ideal  counterpart  to  what  I  have  presumed  to  call 
the  legahsm  of  the  style.  Extracts,  like  other  trans- 
plantations, are  prone  to  be  disappointing,  but  I 
shall  draw  what  illustrative  service  I  can  from  the 
following  excerpt  from  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

Elizabeth  laughed  heartily  at  this  picture  of  herself,  and  said 
to  Colonel  Fitzwilliam,  "Your  cousin  will  give  you  a  very 
pretty  notion  of  me,  and  teach  you  not  to  beUeve  a  word  I  say. 
I  am  particularly  unlucky  in  meeting  with  a  person  so  well  able 
to  expose  my  real  character,  in  a  part  of  the  world  where  I  had 
hoped  to  pass  myself  off  with  some  degree  of  credit.  Indeed, 
Mr.  Darcy,  it  is  very  ungenerous  of  you  to  mention  all  that  you 
knew  to  my  disadvantage  in  Hertfordshire — and,  give  me  leave 
to  say,  very  impoUtic  too — for  it  is  provoking  me  to  retaliate, 
and  such  things  may  come  out  as  will  shock  your  relations  to 
hear." 

"I  am  not  afraid  of  you,"  said  he,  smilingly. 

"Pray  let  me  hear  what  you  have  to  accuse  him  of,"  cried 
Colonel  Fitzwilliam.  "I  should  like  to  know  how  he  behaves 
among  strangers." 

"You  shall  hear  then — but  prepare  yourself  for  something 
very  dreadful.  The  first  time  of  my  ever  seeing  him  in  Hert- 
fordshire, you  must  know,  was  at  a  ball — and  at  this  ball,  what 
do  you  think  he  did?  He  danced  only  four  dances.  I  am  sorry  to 
pain  you — but  so  it  was.  He  danced  only  four  dances,  though 
gentlemen  were  scarce;  and,  to  my  certain  knowledge,  more 
than  one  young  lady  was  sitting  down  in  want  of  a  partner. 
Mr.  Darcy,  you  cannot  deny  the  fact." 

"  I  had  not  at  that  time  the  honour  of  knowing  any  lady  in  the 
assembly  beyond  my  own  party." 

"True;  and  nobody  can  ever  be  introduced  in  a  ball- 
room." 


216  JANE  AUSTEN 

The  phrase,  "I  am  sorry  to  pain  you"  as  witticism 
is  ordinary  enough,  but  it  is  deftly  placed  and  per- 
fectly said,  and  its  effect  in  the  context  is  charming. 
The  whole  passage  illustrates  the  salutary  force  of 
that  positiveness,  of  that  robust  and  affirmative 
property,  of  which  the  manifestations  in  Miss  Aus- 
ten's work  are  so  variously  happy. 

Humor  is  commonly  the  result  of  the  clash  between 
two  dissenting  sets  of  values,  and  in  Miss  Austen's 
case  the  sources  of  dissent  can  be  pointed  out  with 
definiteness,  if  not  with  completeness  or  rigor.  The 
first  and  least  important  of  the  disparities  is  the 
opposition  of  the  judicious  and  the  freakish  which  I 
have  already  noted  in  the  letter-writer,  the  imperious- 
ness  of  the  caprice  finding  its  pointed  contrast  and 
eventual  correction  in  the  delayed  but  unqualified 
surrender  to  fact.  What  points  the  situation  is  the 
grave  irony  which  makes  the  caprice  almost  as 
magisterial  as  the  judgment.  "I  am  very  much 
obhged  to  Mrs.  Knight  for  such  a  proof  of  the 
interest  she  takes  in  me,  and  she  may  depend  upon 
it  that  I  will  marry  Mr.  Papillon,  whatever  be  his 
reluctance  or  my  own.  I  owe  her  much  more  than 
such  a  trifling  sacrifice." 

The  second  and  more  usual  form  of  clash  is  illus- 
trated in  the  following  passage: 

The  good  news  quickly  spread  through  the  house,  and  with 
proportionate  speed  through  the  neighborhood.  It  was  borne 
in  the  latter  with  decent  philosophy.    To  be  sure,  it  would  have 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  217 

been  more  for  the  advantage  of  conversation  had  Miss  Lydia 
Bennet  come  upon  the  town;  or,  as  the  happiest  alternative, 
been  secluded  from  the  world,  in  some  distant  farm-house.  But 
there  was  much  to  be  talked  of  in  marrying  her;  and  the  good- 
natured  wishes  for  her  well-doing  which  had  proceeded  before 
from  all  the  spiteful  old  ladies  in  Meryton  lost  but  little  of  their 
spirit  in  this  change  of  circumstances,  because  with  such  a  hus- 
band her  misery  was  considered  certain. 

In  Miss  Austen's  matter-of-fact  world  there 
was  a  curious  paradox.  It  was  a  world  that  loved 
materiahties,  the  beef  and  pudding  in  which  long 
ago,  perhaps  unjustly,  Lowell  found  the  fulcrum 
with  which  to  move  John  Bull,  a  world  that 
was  unashamed  in  its  pursuit  of  houses  and  lands, 
dinners  and  lunches,  Uvings  and  dowries,  orchards 
and  coach  horses.  Jane  Austen  was  a  wiUing  part 
of  this  world,  and  her  assent  to  its  ideals  was  un- 
perturbed and  cordial.  But  this  was  not  the  end. 
The  earth-world  begets  an  air- world  as  its  adjunct 
and  envelope;  prosperity  results  in  that  priceless 
boon  and  dreaded  pest  called  leisure,  and  people  fly 
from  the  vacuum  of  sohtude  to  what  harsher  critics 
would  describe  as  the  equal  vacuum  of  social  inter- 
course. The  implement  of  society  is  speech,  and  a 
new  world,  a  world  of  communication,  is  formed,  in 
which  old  values  are  whimsically  modified  and  trans- 
posed; the  particle  is  enlarged  and  the  magnitude 
reduced,  imcertainty  becomes  fact  and  prophecy 
fulfilment,  calamities  gratify  and  prosperities  dis- 
please, life  is  re-edited,  in  short,  to  suit  the  call  of 


218  JANE  AUSTEN 

the  occasion  or  the  pleasure  of  the  individual.  We 
have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Miss  Austen  accepted 
this  secondary  world  with  the  same  serenity  and 
alacrity  with  which  she  lent  herself  to  the  sohd  uni- 
verse of  which  it  was  the  mocking  shadow.  She 
perceived  its  unreality,  but  she  did  not  infer  its 
unsoundness.  She  viewed  it  very  much  as  she  viewed 
the  fruits  on  the  ladies'  hats  in  Bath.  She  had  good 
eyes,  and  she  knew  perfectly  well  that  the  grapes 
and  cherries  of  the  feminine  headgear  were  not 
edible  grapes  and  cherries.  But,  so  far  as  we  know, 
it  never  occurred  to  her  that  they  were  not  right 
because  they  were  not  real,  or  that  they  were  less 
legitimate  in  their  own  way  than  the  fruit  which 
pleased  the  taste  and  fed  the  body.  A  real  cherry  on 
a  hat  would  have  been,  not  honest,  but  absurd.  Now 
Miss  Austen  was  a  person  who  grasped  things,  and 
when  a  sham  came  in  her  way,  she  took  hold  of  it 
with  the  admirable  solidity  and  downrightness  with 
which  she  grasped  the  actualities  of  hfe.  That  was 
where  the  fun  arose.  The  relation  between  this 
thin  world  and  this  solid  fashion  of  conceiving  it 
was  the  relation  between  flax  and  hemp,  between 
gauze  and  wire.  An  exhilarating  contrast  resulted 
from  the  expression  of  the  fragile  in  terms  of  the 
massive. 

Jane  Austen  saw  through  these  shams,  but  perhaps 
her  humor  was  brightened  by  the  fact  that,  seeing 
through  them,  she  did  not  see  beyond  them.     In 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  219 

other  words,  she  saw  no  alternative.  In  the  presence 
of  a  strong  inner  vision,  poetical  or  mystical,  the 
vision  of  a  Shelley,  a  Blake,  or  even  a  Galsworthy, 
the  social  fabric  would  have  undergone  a  shrinkage 
in  the  face  of  which  the  contrast  between  its  assump- 
tions and  its  reaUties  would  have  lost  all  its  weight 
and  half  its  piquancy.  But  to  Jane  Austen  society 
was  roof  and  wall.  She  was  social  to  the  core,  con- 
creted with  her  kind,  touching  human  beings  on  all 
sides,  and  touching  httle  else  but  the  corporeities  and 
tangibiUties  of  things.  Somebody  was  always  by; 
her  room  at  Chawton  and  at  Steventon  was  shared 
by  her  sister.  It  is  doubtful  if  she  read  enough  to 
command  that  virtual  solitude  of  which  the  per- 
severing reader  is  master  or  mistress.  Her  books 
were  written  in  secret,  but  the  shifts  to  which  she 
resorted  for  the  maintenance  of  this  secrecy  are 
proof  of  the  degree  to  which  her  hfe  was  enveloped 
and  permeated  by  the  Hfe  of  the  household. 

Outside  of  the  home  proper  and  the  half -domes- 
ticity which  she  enjoyed  in  the  estabhshments  of 
her  generous  and  hospitable  brothers,  loomed  the 
wider  social  world  which  for  Jane  Austen  seems  to 
have  been  both  the  rim  of  experience  and  the  bound- 
ary of  imagination.  Her  letters  are  sanded  with 
proper  names;  she  is  always  meeting,  testing,  dock- 
eting, somebody.  Society  often  bored  and  sometimes 
vexed  her,  but  these  misadventures  apparently  led 
her  to  question  its  finality  as  little  as  a  bad  hand 


220  JANE  AUSTEN 

or  a  bad  partner  at  whist  arouses  any  doubt  of  the 
worth  of  the  game  in  the  mind  of  the  tireless  player. 
It  is  probable  that  Jane's  respect  for  this  order 
whose  extremities  and  eccentricities  she  allowed 
herself  to  satirize  was  at  bottom  unshakable;  and  it 
was  this  esteem  for  the  whole  that  gave  point  to  her 
quarrel  with  the  particulars.  The  last  thing  the 
tactful  humorist  should  do  is  to  call  his  victim  in- 
sane; by  so  doing  he  normahzes  every  vagary.  The 
absurd  in  the  rational  is  comic  because  out  of  place; 
the  absurd  in  the  absurd  is  proper  and  pointless.  In 
the  same  way  a  satire  which  arraigns  society  in  the 
mass  at  once  effaces  contrast  and  levels  expecta- 
tion. To  that  extent  it  defeats  its  own  pmpose. 
Jane  Austen's  concessions  to  society  were  large 
enough  to  give  piquancy  to  her  refusals. 

In  the  portrayal  of  love,  the  second  of  the  two 
things  which  make  Jane  Austen  a  popular  noveUst, 
she  profited  vastly  by  that  positive  and  do\\Tiright 
quality  which  scattered  its  beneficence  so  liberally 
through  her  work.  The  pecuUarity  about  Jane 
Austen's  love  is  that  it  is  a  fact,  a  fact  that  stands 
squarely  and  sharply  in  front  of  you,  blocking  your 
path,  a  fact  that  you  cannot  elude  or  circumvent. 
I  think  this  no  bad  way  in  which  to  approach  the 
passion.  Trollope's  love  is  delicious,  because  he 
felt  and  painted  its  force  without  a  vestige  of  senti- 
mentality and  with  very  little  of  that  pleating  and 
wimpling  which  we  loosely  designate  as  sentiment. 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  221 

His  women  in  love  are  delightful,  because,  while 
womanly  to  the  core,  they  love  almost  like  boys,  not 
blustering  or  domineering  boys,  but  kind  and  modest 
lads,  frank  even  in  shyness.  Miss  Austen's  girls  are 
less  winning  than  Trollope's,  because  they  are  more 
consciously  rational,  but  they  share  with  the  later 
novehst's  heroines  the  half-nautical  properties  of 
trimness  and  balance.  Her  girls  are  always  clear- 
headed, and  their  clearness  as  to  the  man  they  want 
is  so  peremptory  as  to  conquer  in  the  long  run  the 
opposition  of  parents  and  even  the  backwardness  of 
the  man  himself.  Sweet  and  docile  as  they  often 
are,  they  show  very  Uttle  of  that  shy,  reluctant, 
amorous  delay  which  Milton,  a  stickler  for  the  pro- 
prieties even  in  Paradise,  ceremoniously  ascribed 
to  our  first  mother.  Agitation,  of  course,  is  furnished 
in  correct  amounts  at  proper  intervals,  but  this 
flutter  of  the  spirits  is  almost  as  external  to  their 
characters  as  the  flutter  of  their  fans. 

Courtship  is  omnipresent  in  the  novels  of  Jane 
Austen.  Racine  is  said  to  have  found  in  love  the 
counterpoise  to  the  alarming  dearth  of  interest  in 
the  French  classical  drama,  and  his  characters  make 
love  with  an  ardor  proportioned  to  the  necessities 
of  the  dramatist.  Ardor  is  not  the  precise  word  for 
Jane  Austen's  people,  but  they  are  equally  alert  in 
applying  the  same  specific  to  a  kindred  malady.  In 
Pride  and  Prejudice  Miss  Austen  marries  off  three 
daughters  in  one  family — no  small  accomphshment 


222  JANE  AUSTEN 

even  for.  a  novelist  whose  competence  in  match- 
making is  so  formidable.  Apart  from  this  sisterly 
triad,  Miss  Lucas  obtains  Mr.  ColUns,  and  three 
or  fom*  other  tentative  incUnations  are  defeated  or 
renounced.  In  Emma  four  women  obtain  husbands, 
not  to  mention  other  courtships,  in  which  the  issue 
was  less  successful  without  being  less  fortunate. 
In  Persuasion  Anne  and  the  two  Musgrove  sisters 
are  married,  and  even  the  objectionable  Mrs.  Clay 
is  indulged  with  the  prospect  of  a  husband.  Sense 
and  Sensibility  could  hardly  have  been  more  amatory 
if  its  authoress  had  been  Mrs.  Jennings  herself,  and 
the  allowance  of  love-making  in  Mansfield  Park 
would  satisfy  a  school-girl  or  a  lady's  maid. 

In  contrast  with  this  engrossment  with  the  theme 
is  the  unwillingness  to  engage  with  love  in  what 
might  be  described  with  almost  Uteral  accuracy  as  a 
hand-to-hand  encounter.  Miss  Austen  shirks  or 
slights  a  declaration  scene.  She  leads  up  to  it,  she 
circles  round  it,  she  recalls  and  supplements  it; 
but,  if  possible,  she  eludes  the  crisis.  The  obvious 
exception  is  merely  a  formal  exception.  Darcy's 
first  proposal  to  Ehzabeth  is  fully  handled,  because 
it  is  vital  to  the  plot;  moreover,  the  outcome  is 
rejection  and  a  quarrel,  and  Miss  Austen  is  not  called 
upon  to  portray  tenderness.  In  Mr.  Knightley's 
proposition  to  Emma,  Miss  Austen  shares  the  dis- 
comfort of  the  suitor.  Mr.  Crawford  is  granted  a 
Uttle  more  freedom  in  the  expression  of  his  regard 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  223 

for  the  unreciprocating  Fanny.  But  Miss  Austen 
has  only  silence  or  at  best  reserve  for  the  explana- 
tions between  Jane  and  Bingley,  between  Ehnor  and 
Edward  Ferrars,  between  Marianne  and  Colonel 
Brandon,  between  Catherine  Morland  and  Henry 
Tilney,  between  Edmund  Bertram  and  Mary  Craw- 
ford, between  the  same  Edmund  and  Fanny  Price, 
between  Anne  Elliot  and  Captain  Wentworth,  in 
spite  of  the  elaboration  of  the  scaffolding  which  in 
the  last-named  case  hides  the  insignificance  of  the 
edifice.  The  devices  to  which  Miss  Austen  will  re- 
sort in  the  endeavor  to  avoid  a  grapple  with  this 
problem  are  sometimes  comic  in  their  awkwardness. 
What  follows  is  the  sequel  to  Darcy's  second  offer 
to  EHzabeth. 

Elizabeth,  feeling  all  the  more  than  common  awkwardness  and 
anxiety  of  his  situation,  now  forced  herself  to  speak;  and  im- 
mediately, though  not  very  fluently,  gave  him  to  understand  that 
her  sentiments  had  undergone  so  material  a  change  since  the 
period  to  which  he  alluded,  as  to  make  her  receive  with  grati- 
tude and  pleasure  his  present  assurances.  The  happiness  which 
this  reply  produced  was  such  as  he  had  probably  never  felt  before, 
and  he  expressed  himself  on  the  occasion  as  sensibly  and  as 
warmly  as  a  man  violently  in  love  can  be  supposed  to  do. 

The  mistress  of  a  young  ladies'  boarding-school 
could  not  express  herself  with  a  less  informing  or 
more  edifying  vagueness.  What  would  the  author 
of  these  demure  fines  have  said  to  a  certain  other 
woman  who  in  a  letter  to  her  sister  jested  about  a 
lord's  having  a  mistress?    There  is  another  point  in 


g24  JANE  AUSTEN 

the  behavior  of  Miss  Austen  which  a  preceptress 
would  have  cordially  indorsed.  I  do  not  at  this 
moment  recall  a  kiss  given  by  a  young  man  to  a  young 
woman  in  any  novel  of  Jane  Austen;  and  while  this 
generalization  would  doubtless  go  down,  as  such 
fragile  craft  commonly  do,  in  the  storm  and  stress 
of  a  resolute  induction,  the  quaUty  to  which  it 
points  is  seaworthy  enough  to  outride  any  tempest. 
I  have  already  remarked  that  stage-business  is 
missing  in  Miss  Austen's  scenes,  and  a  ban  so  aus- 
tere was  clearly  not  to  be  relaxed  in  favor  of  kissing 
or  fondhng  or  other  expedients  by  which  writers  of 
the  febrile  type  have  raised  the  temperature  and 
lowered  the  morale  of  their  productions.  Miss 
Austen  not  only  excludes  the  flesh,  but,  to  a  very 
great  extent,  its  not  less  attractive  and  more  innocent 
associate,  the  blood. 

I  thought  at  first  that  the  formula,  "force  without 
warmth"  might  serve  to  differentiate  the  Jane 
Austen  brand  of  love.  This  is  on  the  whole  too 
trenchant  and  succinct,  though  it  would  apply 
accurately  enough  to  the  passions  of  such  couples 
as  Darcy  and  EUzabeth,  Emma  and  Mr.  Knightley. 
They  want  each  other  earnestly  no  doubt,  but  they 
want  each  other  as  ambitious  men  want  posts  or 
covetous  men  want  properties;  they  appeal  to  each 
other  as  sterling  investments.  All  the  considera- 
tions that  lead  EUzabeth  to  revise  her  estimate  of 
Darcy  are  considerations  that   would  have  acted 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  225 

with  force  on  a  parent  or  guardian  impartially  con- 
cerned for  Elizabeth's  happiness.  They  include,  of 
course,  the  manners,  brains,  and  morals  which  no 
enhghtened  parent  or  guardian  would  ignore.  EHz- 
abeth  has  looked  over  the  man,  as  she  looked  over 
his  grounds,  and  the  appraisals  in  both  cases  have 
been  reassuring. 

Why,  then,  do  I  hesitate  to  accept  ihe  formula, 
''force  without  warmth,"  as  the  adequate  diagnosis 
of  the  passion?  I  hesitate,  because  I  seem  to  detect 
in  the  shy  passions  of  Fanny  Price  and  Anne  EUiot  a 
hearth  that,  in  Herrick's  beautiful  phrase,  smiles  to 
itself,  and  spreads  a  faint  but  gracious  warmth  in  its 
vicinity.  But  Fanny  Price  and  Anne  Elliot  are 
tender  things,  who  live  in  a  chilly  world,  to  whom  a 
little  warmth  is  allowed  on  the  same  principle  that  a 
fire  might  be  permitted  to  an  invahd  even  in  the 
household  of  an  austere  New  Englander.  Miss  Aus- 
ten is  more  herself  in  other  portraits.  The  case  of 
Marianne  Dashwood  is  significant  in  three  aspects. 
First  of  all,  the  drawing  power,  what  I  am  tempted  to 
call,  by  too  violent  a  figure,  the  tug  or  haul  of  the 
passion,  is  strongly  caught;  second,  the  warmth  is 
hardly  felt,  though  Marianne's  temperament  is 
distinctively  warm;  third,  the  inner  detail  is  entirely 
omitted.  Speaking  broadly,  that  part  of  the  psychol- 
ogy of  the  passion  on  which  Miss  Austen  instinctively 
dwells  is  the  half-satirical  part,  the  marking  of  its 
bounds   and   the   exposure   of   its   inconsistencies. 


226  JANE  AUSTEN 

When  Emma,  who  had  been  angry  with  Mr.  Knight- 
ley  for  his  supposed  intention  to  disinherit  his  young 
nephew  by  marrying  Harriet  Smith,  marries  him 
herself  in  total  indifference  to  the  equal  peril  to  this 
young  nephew's  cherished  prospects,  we  feel  that 
this  is  not  only  shrewd  and  right,  but  eminently 
characteristic  of  the  author.  Equally  happy  is  the 
genial  maUce  in  her  report  of  the  change  in  the 
attitude  of  Mr.  Knightley  toward  Frank  Churchill 
with  the  increase  of  his  awareness  of  Emma's  uncon- 
cern for  that  person. 

He  had  found  her  agitated  and  low.  Frank  Churchill  was  a 
villain.  He  heard  her  declare  that  she  had  never  loved  him. 
Frank  Churchill's  character  was  not  desperate.  She  was  his  own 
Emma,  by  hand  and  word,  when  they  returned  into  the  house; 
and  if  he  could  have  thought  of  Frank  Churchill  then,  he  might 
have  deemed  him  a  very  good  sort  of  fellow. 

That  is  what  I  mean  by  force  without  warmth.  Of 
course  force  and  warmth  could  not  be  separated  in 
the  actual  Mr.  Knightley;  they  are  simply  dis- 
criminated in  the  portrayal. 

Literature  has  two  fashions  of  viewing  love.  The 
first  regards  love  as  a  motor  or  dynamo;  it  starts  the 
narrative,  and  keeps  it  moving.  In  this  regard  its 
value  is  unhmited,  but  as  long  as  it  propels  the  car, 
an  inquiry  into  the  detail  of  its  mechanism  is  useless, 
if  not  hurtful.  The  immortal  instance  is  the  elope- 
ment of  Helen  and  Paris  and  its  calamitous  sequel 
in  ten  years  of  heroic  and  profitless  conflict  between 


LIABILITIES  AND  ASSETS  227 

Europe  and  Asia.  We  know  that  the  thankless  and 
disdainful  Homer  vouchsafes  only  a  casual  word  or 
two  to  the  content  or  aspect  of  a  passion  to  which  he 
owed  the  glory  of  an  Iliad.  The  second  fashion  of 
treatment  views  love,  not  as  the  mere  incentive  or 
starting-point  of  the  exhibition,  but  as,  in  large  part 
at  least,  the  exhibition  itself.  A  colossal — almost  a 
portentous — instance  is  foimd  in  Chaucer's  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  in  which  the  symptomatic  treatment, 
the  treatment  by  particularization  of  symptoms, 
is  carried  to  a  point  which  breeds  rebellion  in  those 
who  can  read  Romeo  and  Juliet  with  joy,  and  D'An- 
nunzio's  II  Fuoco  with  fortitude. 

Between  these  two  forms  of  approach  Miss  Austen 
chooses  a  diagonal.  Love  on  the  amorous  side,  its 
warmth,  its  intimacy,  its  poetry,  its  color,  she  rejects 
with  quiet  decision.  Psychology  of  a  kind  she  does 
paint,  but  I  trust  I  shall  not  fall  into  Venetian  super- 
subtlety  if  I  suggest  that  what  she  gave  was  less  the 
psychology  of  love  as  such  than  the  psychology  of 
human  nature  as  affected  by  the  perturbations  and 
instabiUties  for  which  that  imsettling  passion  is 
responsible.  Half  her  pleasure  in  love  grew  out  of 
the  new  scope  it  offered  to  the  perceptive  and  judicial 
faculties  in  the  exercise  of  which  her  interest  was 
unquenchable.  Love  was  a  fresh  call  to  judgment,  a 
new  spur  to  criticism.  Jane  Austen,  again,  felt  a  keen 
interest  in  the  vibrations  and  palpitations,  the  con- 
cords and  discords,  the  cleavages  and  solderings, 


228  JANE  AUSTEN 

which  betrothals  induce  in  the  environment  of  the 
lovers.  She  was  precise  in  her  drawing  of  the  sec- 
ondary or  derivative  traits  of  love,  and  her  sense  of 
its  limitations  was  reaUstically  keen;  the  primary 
traits  alone  were  left  in  the  cautious  twiUght  of 
conventional  assumptions.  When  Jane  Austen's 
lovers  meet,  the  gas  is  turned  low. 


CHAPTER   XI 

CONCLUSION 

Jane  Austen's  nature  was  vigorous  and  down- 
right; her  method  was  largely  formal  and  abstract: 
the  effort  of  the  method  to  smother  the  nature  and 
the  craft  of  the  nature  in  circmnventing  the  method 
are  points  of  analytic  and  dramatic  interest  in  a 
survey  of  her  work.  In  some  respects  I  think  she 
was  imfortunately  posted  in  the  ahgnment  of  the 
forces  of  EngUsh  hteratiu-e  in  the  vast  terrain  of  the 
centuries.  For  the  eighteenth-century  pomp  and 
circumstance  which  she  so  strongly  exhibited,  it 
was  a  httle  too  late;  for  her  nineteenth-century 
reahsm,  it  was  a  Httle  too  early.  Recognition  in  the 
sequel  was  secure,  but  the  recognition  of  posterity 
neither  sustains  nor  encourages.  By  her  back- 
wardness in  form  and  by  her  forwardness  in  sub- 
stance she  was  equally  divided  from  the  great  ro- 
mantic movement  which  irradiated  and  transformed 
the  nterature  of  her  day.  In  one  point  indeed  its 
example  might  have  been  Hberating;  it  might  have 
prompted  the  transference  to  her  novels  of  the 
concrete  and  pictorial  diction  which  became  her 
instinctive  vehicle  in  the  undress  of  the  Letters. 
But  in  this  point  her  luck  in  time  was  counterpoised 

229 


280  JANE  AUSTEN 

by  her  mischance  in  place;  that  beer-brewing  and 
ham-curing,  that  hat-trimming  and  shirt-making, 
that  card-playing  and  Bath-visiting,  society  in  which 
she  lived  moved  too  slowly  to  find  in  Jane  Austen 
the  youthful  plasticity  which  would  have  leaped  to 
welcome  the  renovating  touch.  I  think  her  novels 
had  one  soUtary  point  of  resemblance  to  the  prose 
fictions  of  her  great  contemporary  and  antitype, 
Walter  Scott;  the  form  in  both  was  a  quarter  or 
half  century  behind  the  matter — if  in  Miss  Austen's 
case  we  should  not  rather  say  a  century  behind. 

Even  in  the  point  of  matter  I  think  that  Miss 
Austen  suffered  from  the  intellectual  and  artistic 
poverty  of  her  environment.  Her  associates  had 
good  minds  no  doubt,  and  they  were  just  sufficiently 
well  read  to  escape  the  charge  of  want  of  reading. 
But  they  could  supply  Httle  to  a  novelist  except  a 
theme,  and  several  traits  in  Jane  Austen  which 
might  have  flourished  under  culture  were  doomed  to 
meagre  sustenance  and  scant  thrift  in  that  un- 
generous soil.  One  of  these  was  feeling  for  landscape; 
another  was  interest  in  what  might  be  broadly  called 
the  body  and  apparel  of  life.  A  third  was  psychology, 
in  which  Miss  Austen's  success,  though  considerable 
and  praiseworthy,  was  far  from  commensurate  with 
the  scope  of  her  faculty.  A  fourth  was  reflection  on 
life;  few  people  who  have  generalized  so  keenly  have 
generalized  so  little.  No  wise  critic  will  ampfify 
these  negations.    In  all  cases  of  large  achievement 


CONCLUSION  231 

regret  for  shortcomings  is  as  ignorant  as  it  is  thank- 
less and  sterile.  Limitations  have  their  miguessed 
benefits;  the  fence  that  keeps  one  good  thing  out 
may  keep  another  good  thing  in.  I  am  not  sure  that 
one  great  reason  for  Jane  Austen's  success  was  not 
that  in  the  tightness  of  her  enclosure  she  was  not 
bothered  by  stimuh  nor  pestered  with  encourage- 
ments. 

I  am  fortified  in  this  resignation  by  a  feeUng  that 
Jane  Austen  did  her  work  with  the  minimum  of  fuss 
and  self-consciousness.  Literature  as  a  whole  is 
probably  more  instinctive  than  the  deference  of  the 
layman  imagines.  There  are  authors  who  plan  un- 
doubtedly, but  one  suspects  that  this  comes  about 
less  because  they  plan  to  plan  than  because  they  have 
an  inborn  appetite  for  planning.  One  may  further 
suspect,  if  one  likes,  that,  even  when  pains  are 
lavished  upon  the  work,  the  author  is  generous  in  one 
quarter  and  parsimonious  in  another  in  a  fashion 
regulated  rather  by  his  own  taste  than  the  needs  and 
deserts  of  the  topic  in  question;  otherwise  it  is  hard 
to  explain  the  absence  of  perfection,  and  even  of  any 
evenness  or  symmetry  in  the  approach  to  perfection, 
on  the  part  of  works  that  bear  the  fingermarks  of 
study.  Let  the  principle  be  sound  or  not ;  our  present 
concern  is  its  bearing  on  Jane  Austen.  Byron  woke 
one  morning,  and  found  himself  famous;  Jane  may 
similarly  have  awakened  some  morning,  and  found 
that  she  had  written  a  book.    If  I  said  that  her 


232  JANE  AUSTEN 

material  slid  through  her  into  her  book,  I  might  be 
accused  of  rhetoric.  Let  me  say  in  less  questionable 
terms  that  she  saw  things  in  life  which  she  thought 
it  would  be  amusing  to  set  down,  and  she  set  them 
down — the  earhest,  simplest,  and  most  auspicious 
origin  of  books.  I  doubt  if  she  cared  much  to  aid  the 
world.  True,  her  novels  have  lessons;  in  those 
didactic  times  she  would  no  more  have  sent  a  novel 
into  the  world  unprovided  with  a  lesson  than  desti- 
tute of  a  binding.  Both  lessons  and  bindings  have 
their  use;  they  hold  loose  sheets  together.  I  do  not 
mean  that  she  was  insincere  in  her  lesson  any  more 
than  I  mean  that  she  was  indifferent  to  her  binding, 
but  it  is  unlikely  that  either  constituted  her  incentive 
to  write.  On  one  occasion  she  names  those  incen- 
tives. They  include  praise,  and  what  she  calls 
pewter  (money),  but  she  is  shamelessly  silent  as  to 
the  satisfactions  to  be  derived  from  the  practice  of 
leechcraft  on  an  ailing  race. 

I  doubt  if  she  felt  a  moral  responsibility  in  relation 
to  the  truth  of  her  works.  She  would  not  have  writ- 
ten truth  with  a  capital  letter;  she  would  have 
feared  that  the  next  step  might  be  to  spell  it  "ew" 
with  the  oleaginous  Mr.  Chadband,  whose  ac- 
quaintance she  did  not  live  to  make.  I  think  she 
portrayed  truth,  when  she  did  portray  truth,  because 
she  liked  it — really  Hked  it — without  theory  and 
without  conscience,  and  I  think  this  independence 
and  unconcern  in  combination  with  real  attachment 


CONCLUSION  233 

is  part  of  her  strength.  It  may  be  virtuous  to  speak 
truth,  because  it  is  holy  or  useful;  but  it  is  safe  and 
fortunate  to  follow  it  because  it  is  interesting.  It  is 
perhaps  a  slight  defect  in  the  otherwise  unexcep- 
tionable attitude  of  our  own  excellent  Mr.  Howells 
that  he  affects  us  as  having  stood  up  in  church  with 
truth,  and  uttered  the  promise  to  hold,  love  and 
cherish  with  appropriate  solemnity.  After  that,  it  is 
all  a  matter  of  course.  Who  minds  a  man's  atten- 
tions to  his  wife?  With  Jane  the  affair  has  all  the 
interest  of  courtship.  Let  truth  be  on  his  guard.  If 
fiction  should  turn  out  to  be  the  sprightUer  fellow  of 
the  two?  It  is  good  to  be  natural  in  one's  love  of 
nature.  I  do  not  know  whether  Jane  was  uncon- 
scious or  unscrupulous  in  the  modifications  of  truth 
which  she  unquestionably  tolerated.  Her  surrenders 
to  convention  were  large,  and  we  have  already  seen 
that  in  her  comic  portrayals,  far  from  copying  that 
slatternly  housewife  Nature  in  the  dinginess  of  her 
kitchenware,  she  scoured  the  truth  until  it  fairly 
shone. 

Jane  Austen,  it  seems  to  me,  was  genuine,  not 
superficially  nor  fussily  nor  dehcately  nor  con- 
scientiously nor  heroically  genuine,  but  genuine  in  a 
large,  basic,  temperamental  way  that  wiuked  at 
little  Hes  and  tiny  poses,  that  could  give  way  to 
manners,  to  decency,  for  aught  I  know,  to  interest, 
but  which  in  the  absence  of  deflectors  instinctively 
and  strongly  preferred  the  fun  of  uttering  its  own 


234  JANE  AUSTEN 

sensations  to  the  credit  of  voicing  other  people's. 
She  enjoyed  her  own  mind;  she  took  herself  cheer- 
fully like  other  dispensations  of  Providence.  She 
did  not  care  to  say  what  she  did  not  feel,  and  she 
refused  to  do  so  unless  the  need  were  peremptory. 
She  had  neither  presumption  nor  diffidence — the 
vices  of  self-consciousness.  She  had  gauged  her 
own  capacities  with  singular  exactness,  and,  by  a 
pleasing  paradox,  a  wise  self -distrust  kept  her  within 
the  limits  within  which  she  could  maintain  a  reason- 
able self-confidence.  Her  conformity  and  her  self- 
reliance  are  both  interestingly  shown  in  her  corre- 
spondence with  the  royal  librarian,  Mr.  J.  S.  Clarke. 
She  would  dedicate  Emma  to  the  Prince  Regent, 
if  that  potentate  chose  to  have  it  so,  but  she  writes 
a  letter  to  his  librarian  in  which  the  literary  advice 
of  that  slightly  presumptuous  gentleman  is  civilly 
but  summarily  rejected. 

To  understand  Jane  Austen,  we  must  remember 
that  she  had  both  a  strong  and  a  docile  mind.  The 
adjustment  of  these  traits  to  each  other  was  easier 
than  it  might  have  been  in  a  more  thoughtful  en- 
vironment or  a  later  century.  Agreement  between 
the  strength  and  the  docility  was  more  usual  than 
difference,  and  where  difference  occurred,  there  was 
apparently  no  conflict.  Sometimes  the  strength 
overcame  or  quietly  set  aside  the  docility,  sometimes 
the  docility  was  too  much  for  the  strength;  and 
Jane  Austen  was  no  more  humiliated  by  the  second 


CONCLUSION  235 

outcome  than  she  was  inflated  by  the  first.  Jane  was 
conventional  in  the  old  fashion,  the  better  fashion 
which  prevailed  before  conventionality  was  dis- 
covered, and  the  word  had  had  time  to  define  and 
defile  the  idea.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  her 
conformities  are  sometimes  harmful  to  her  work. 
Jane  Austen  was  no  precisian  or  pulpiteer,  but  a 
precisian  or  pulpiteer  might  have  adopted  her  work 
as  his  model.  I  do  not  think  that  she  was  self- 
conscious,  but  I  think  that  almost  all  her  characters 
speak  self-consciously.  Miss  Austen  wrote  majes- 
tically for  the  same  reason  that  she  wrote  in  English. 
She  felt  that  she  could  no  more  act  on  her  undoubted 
preference  for  homely  directness  than  she  could  have 
acted  on  an  abstract  preference  for  French.  She 
donned  the  manner  as  her  father  and  brother  donned 
the  surplice  for  the  conduct  of  morning  worship,  or 
as  she  and  the  English  world,  if  her  presages  were 
verified,  put  on  mourning  for  the  Duke  of  Glou- 
cester. A  sharp  distinction  must  be  drawn  between 
submission  to  general  usage  and  that  aping  of  a 
particular  usage,  neither  natural  to  ourselves  nor 
binding  on  the  world,  which  we  justly  stigmatize  as 
affectation.  When  people  wore  mourning  for  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  nobody  was  sincere  and  nobody 
was  affected;  when  everybody  pretends,  everybody 
confesses  and  nobody  pretends. 

The  fate  of  Jane  Austen  in  this  particular  was,  I 
suspect,  the  fate  of  George  Crabbe,  who,  though  at 


236  JANE  AUSTEN 

heart  a  plainspoken,  straightforward  fellow,  had 
the  eighteenth  century  on  his  back,  and  never 
taught  his  mere  manner  to  straighten  up  from  its 
bending  posture  to  the  natural  and  manly  per- 
pendicular. The  eighteenth  century  was  a  self- 
conscious  century,  and  a  modest  person  brought  up 
under  its  tutelage  avoided  personal  self-consciousness 
by  fleeing  to  the  shelter  of  a  self-consciousness  so 
general  and  so  binding  as  to  deaden  its  own  quality. 
In  such  an  age  one  dared  not  be  simple  for  fear  of 
affectation.  Jane's  attitude  in  all  this  was  absolutely 
unheroic.  Souls  of  harder  edge  whose  mission  was  to 
liberate  and  inspire  the  world  would  have  followed 
their  own  impulses  to  all  lengths  at  all  costs.  But 
there  is  room  for  variety  of  type  on  a  tolerant  and 
hospitable  planet.  Jane  Austen's  business  was  not 
to  liberate  or  inspire  the  world,  and  these  archangels 
in  their  empyreal  preoccupations  have  found  no 
time  to  leave  us  Northanger  Abbeys  or  Mansfield 
Parks. 

I  have  uttered  the  word  "inspu-e,"  and  I  take  up 
the  implicit  challenge  of  that  word.  What  was  the 
scope  of  Jane  Austen's  commerce  with  life?  Were 
there  depths  and  secrecies  in  her  experience  which 
left  no  mark  on  the  sunny  reaches  of  her  tranquil  and 
equable  novels,  no  shadow  on  the  current  of  her 
racy  and  provocative  correspondence?  To  this 
query  the  reply  is  doubtful.  We  cannot  co-ordinate 
experience  with  utterance  until  we  have  measured 


CONCLUSION  237 

the  limits  of  reserve,  and  reserve  is  silent  as  to  its  own 
limits.  That  Jane  Austen  may  have  felt  things 
which  she  could  not  impart  to  that  singular  combina- 
tion of  intimate  and  stranger  which  we  call  a  relative 
is  believable  enough.  It  is  somewhat  harder  to 
beheve  that  she  felt  things  which  it  was  impossible 
to  impart  to  that  combination  of  intimate  and 
stranger  on  very  different  lines  which  we  call  a 
reader.  If  Jane  Austen  struggled  and  aspired,  she 
wrote  six  novels  without  introducing  a  character  who 
struggled  and  aspired,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  this 
reticence  is  human.  It  is  safer  to  assume  that 
morality  and  rehgion  made  upon  Miss  Austen  cer- 
tain claims  as  definitive  and  as  imperative  as  the 
butcher's  and  grocer's  bills,  and  that  they  were  as 
readily  placated  and  as  eflfectually  put  aside  by  the 
liquidation  of  these  claims  as  the  butcher  and  grocer 
by  the  apphcation  of  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence. 
That  what  may  be  called  the  wryness  of  things  made 
itself  known  to  her  in  some  form  or  other  it  is  im- 
possible to  doubt.  A  woman  as  keen  as  Jane  Austen 
does  not  Uve  to  forty  years  without  finding  much  to 
pardon,  or  not  to  pardon,  in  this  churhsh  and  incon- 
sequential world.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
her  stoutness  was  not  equal  to  all  tests,  or  that  she 
was  warped  or  embittered  by  the  stringencies  that 
find  their  ruthless  way  into  the  most  firmly  fenced 
and  snugly  bolted  lives.  She  was  a  censor,  but 
no  cynic.    Cynicism  is  the  revenge  we  take  upon  a 


238  JANE  AUSTEN 

disobliging  cosmos  for  its  failure  to  come  up  to 
expectations.  It  is  highly  probable  that  the  strong 
sense  which  is  demonstrable  and  the  absence  of 
idealism  which  is  presumable  in  Jane  Austen  reduced 
expectations  to  a  level  with  which  reality  could 
rationally  cope.  She  is  not  the  sweet  Jane  Austen  of 
complacent  legend,  but  a  Jane  more  to  my  taste,  a 
plain,  frank,  keen-sighted  Enghshwoman,  with  an 
inspiriting  wiKulness  that  had  its  bound  and  check  in 
a  touching  docility,  with  an  incisiveness  finally  and 
securely,  though  not  immediately  or  showily,  subject 
to  benevolence,  and  with  a  friendly  acceptance  of 
limited  surroundings  of  which  the  literature  she  gave 
to  a  grateful  country  was  at  once  the  expression,  the 
result,  and  the  reward. 


APPENDIX 


REFERENCES 

I  believe  in  full  and  precise  references,  but  have 
a  strong  distaste  for  the  intrusiveness  of  such  mate- 
rial where  it  interrupts  the  text  or  Utters  the  margin. 
The  best  escape  from  two  evils  is  to  give  a  reference 
to  every  important  quotation  or  allusion  in  the  text 
in  a  final  appendix  under  the  appropriate  page- 
number.  Suppose,  for  instance,  a  reader  wishes  to 
verify  the  passage  beginning  "There  were  very  few 
beauties"  on  page  199.  On  page  199  he  will  find  no 
note  and  no  indication  of  a  note.  But  all  he  has 
to  do  is  to  turn  to  the  appendix  where  the  notes  are 
grouped  in  the  numerical  order  of  the  pages,  and 
find  199,  opposite  which  the  phrase  will  be  found  in 
connection  with  the  desired  reference,  ''Brabourne, 
I,  242-243." 

References  to  the  novels  are  made  by  book  and 
chapter;  further  detail,  in  the  diversity  of  editions, 
seemed  impracticable. 

Memoir,  in  these  references,  means  the  Memoir  of 
Jane  Austen  by  her  nephew,  the  Rev.  J.  E.  Austen 
Leigh  (Boston:  Roberts  Brothers,  1892).  Lady 
Susan  and  the  Watsons  are  published  in  the  same 
volume,  and,  sometimes  at  least,  stand  first  in  the 
title. 

241 


242  APPENDIX 

Life  means  Jane  Austen;  her  Life  and  Letters,  by 
William  Austen-Leigh  and  Richard  Arthm*  Austen- 
Leigh,  grandnephew  and  great-grandnephew  of  Jane 
Austen  (London:  Smith,  Elder  and  Co.,  1913). 

Brabourne  means  Letters  of  Jane  Austen,  edited  by 
Edward,  Lord  Brabourne,  another  grandnephew 
(London:  Richard  Bentley  and  Son,  1884). 

Goldwin  Smith  means  Lije  of  Jane  Austen,  by 
Goldwin  Smith  (London:  W.  Scott,  1890,  in  the  Great 
Writers  series.) 

A  useful  bibliography  is  appended  to  the  Life  and 
Letters;  it  closes  with  the  year  1913. 


LIST  OF  REFERENCES 
Page 
3.  "The  dating  of  Miss  Austen's  novels,"  Pride  and  Prejudice 
(Ever3nman's   Library:   E.    P.    Button),    Introduction, 
page  12. 
13.  "And  you,  you  well  known  trees,"  Sense  and  Sensibility,  v. 
13.  " '  Nor  I,'  answered  Marianne,"  Sense  and  Sensibility,  xxvii. 
19.  "Half-way  between  Squire  Western,"  Goldwin  Smith,  iii. 

37.  "Nobody  but  a  puppy,"  Goldwin  Smith,  ii. 

38.  "My  character  required,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xxxv. 

40.  "Help  smiling  at  his  easy  manner,"  Pride  and  Prejudice, 

Iviii. 
40-41.  "His  appearance  was  greatly,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xv. 

42.  "'Twas  no  hypocrisy,"  Thackeray,  Henry  Esmond,  Book  I, 

Ch.  10. 

43.  "The  death  of  your  daughter,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xlviii. 
46.  "As  for  Mr,  Hurst,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  viii. 

50.  "No  one  who  had  ever  seen  Catherine  Morland,"  North- 
anger  Abbey,  i. 


REFERENCES  243 

Page 
50-51.  "I  will  show  you  a  heroine,"  Gaskell,  Charlotte  BrontS, 

XV. 

59.  "Goldwin  Smith  finds  him  so  like,"  Goldwin  Smith,  viii. 

60.  "I  must  confess  that  his  affection,"  Northanger  Abbey,  xxx. 
72.  "Let  other  pens,"  Mansfield  Park,  xlviii. 

83.  "Tom  listened  with  some  shame,"  Mansfield  Park,  iii. 

85.  "Short  of  criminahty,"  Goldwin  Smith,  vi. 

86.  "She  is  exceedingly  true,"  H.  James,  Partial  Portraits^ 

125-126. 
88-89.  "While  Fanny's  mind,"  Mansfield  Park,  xxxii. 
91.  "I  never  bribed  a  physician,"  Mansfield  Park,  xlv. 
94.  "A  party  of  men  of  letters,"  Goldwin  Smith,  vi. 
107.  "In  the  final  conversation  with  Emma,"  Emma,  liv. 
110.  "Opinions  of  Emma,"  Life,  xviii,  328-331. 
118.  "Anne,  in  a  rather  intimate  conversation,"  Persuasion, 
xxiii. 

120.  "Miss  Bates,  let  Emma  help  you,"  Emma,  iii. 

121.  "She  is  almost  too  good  for  me,"  Life,  xviii,  336. 

122.  "Altered  beyond  knowledge,"  Persuasion,  vii. 
122.  "At  Lyme,"  Persuasion,  xii. 

126.  "A  perfect  gentleman,"  Persuasion,  xi. 

128.  "Eight  lines  of  the  concluding  chapter,"  Persuasion,  xxiv. 

133.  "Had  you  not  better  give  some  hint,"  Brahourne,  ii,  323. 

134.  "Your  abuse  of  our  gowns,"  Brahourne,  i,  236-237. 
134-135.  "But  biography,"  Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson,  Introduc- 
tion. 

136.  "It  is  a  truth,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  i. 

136-137.  "Mr.  Collins  was  not  a  sensible  man,"  Pride  and 

Prejudice,  xv. 
137-138.  "Mr.  Darcy  was  expected,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xxx. 
138.  "The  subject  of  reading  aloud,"  Mansfield  Park,  xxxiv. 
138-139.  "Harriet  Smith's  intimacy,"  Emma,  iv. 

140.  "She  was  a  woman  of  mean  understanding,"  Pride  and 

Prejudice,  i. 

141.  "Everybody  was  pleased,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xxiv. 
141.  "Each  felt  for  the  other,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  liii. 


244  APPENDIX 

Page 

142,  "Each  Fury  skips,"  Lyly,  Endymion,  III,  iii. 

142.  "Each  of  these  ladies,"  Galsworthy,  Man  of  Property,  i. 

142.  "Mr.  Hinton  is  expected  home,"  Brahourne,  ii,  237. 

142.  "Imputing  his  visit,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xxxiv. 

142.  "Before  her  answer,"  Sense  and  Sensibility,  iv. 

142.  "And  that  Serle  and  the  butler,"  Emma,  xxv. 

147.  "Calm  remark  of  her  grand-nephew,"  Brahourne,  I,  In- 

troduction, xiii, 

148.  "Whoever  may  have  been,"  Sense  and  Sensibility,  xxix. 

149.  "Yes,  yes,  I  see  you  are,"  Persuasion,  xx. 

149.  "It  is  not  of  peculiar,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xU. 

150.  "All  the  privilege  I  claim,"  Persuasion,  xxiii. 
150.  "If  Louisa  Musgrove,"  Persuasion,  x. 

152.  "The  Evelyns,"  Brabourne,  i,  287. 

153-154.  "I  see  what  you  think  of  me,"  Northanger  Abbey,  iii, 

158.  "Miss  Austen's  niece,"  Brabourne,  ii,  277-299. 

158,  "Three  on  four  pages,"  Mansfield  Park,  xxxv. 

158.  "At  any  rate,"  Brabourne,  i,  211. 

158-159.  "In  Cecilia,  for  example,"  Macaulay,  Essays,  Vol.  V, 

309-310. 
165.  "You  must  have  heard  him  notice,"  Persuasion,  v. 
167.  "Pictures  of  perfection,"  Brabourne,  ii,  300. 
169.  "Mrs.  Norris,  we  are  told,"  Life,  xvi,  297. 
171.  "Charlotte  herself  was  tolerably,"  Pride  and  Prejudice, 

xxii. 
171,  "He  had  very  good  spirits,"  Persuasion,  vi. 
171-172.  "Lady  Elliot  had  been,"  Persuasion,  i. 
178,  "Leslie  Stephen,"  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  ii,  260, 

180.  "Her  figure  was  rather  tall,"  Memoir,  v. 

181.  "Devours,"  Brabourne,  i,  132. 

181.  "Toasted  cheese,"  Brabourne,  i,  305. 

182,  "Which  I  consider,"  Brabourne,  i,  165, 
182.  "Little  dumplings,"  Brabourne,  i,  165-166. 

182.  "Was  not  ashamed  of  asking  him,"  Brabourne,  i,  173, 
182,  "We  are  to  kill  a  pig,"  Brabourne,  i,  165, 
182,  Turkey  redux,  Brabourne,  i,  275. 


REFERENCES  245 

Page 

182.  "Rice  puddings  and  apple  dumplings,"  Brabourne,  i,  313. 

182.  "Asparagus  and  a  lobster,"  Brabourne,  i,  207. 

182.  "Oyster  sauce,"  Brabourne,  i,  155. 

182.  "Soup,  fish,  bouille^,"  Brabourne,  ii,  145. 
182-183.  "Bath  is  virtuous,"  Brabourne,  i,  281. 

183.  "Orangewine,"Li/e,  XX,  381. 

183.  "I  shall  eat  ice,"  Brabourne,  i,  374. 

183.  "Soup  and  wine  and  water,"  Brabourne,  ii,  146.- 

183.  "By-the-bye,"  Brabourne,  ii,  209-210. 

183.  "I  believe  I  drank  too  much  wine,"  Brabourne,  i,  241. 
183-184.  "I  find  time  in  the  midst  of  port,"  Brabourne,  ii,  200. 

184.  "We  hear  now,"  Brabourne,  ii,  267. 

184.  "Tea,  coffee,  and  chocolate,"  Life,  xii,  196. 
184.  "Syllabub,  tea,  and  coffee,"  Brabourne,  ii,  108. 

184,  "As  to  Fanny,"  Brabourne,  ii,  108-109. 

184-185.  "I  have  read  the  'Corsair',"  Brabourne,  ii,  222. 

185.  "It  will  be  white  satin,"  Brabourne,  ii,  150. 
185.  "Black  cap  to  a  ball,"  Brabourne,  i,  185-186. 
185.  "I  find  my  straw  bonnet,"  Brabourne,  i,  283. 
185.  "Cherries,  plums,  apricots,"  Brabourne,  i,  212. 
185.  "I  wear  my  gauze  gown,"  Brabourne,  ii,  232. 

185.  "I  suppose  everybody  will  be  black,"  Brabourne,  i,  311. 

186.  "They  are  so  very  sweet,"  Brabourne,  ii,  198. 
186.  "I  have  got  your  cloak  home,"  Brabourne,  i,  217. 
186.  "I  took  the  liberty,"  Brabourne,  I,  i,  177. 

186.  "I  have  found  your  white  mittens,"  Brabourne,  i,  301. 

186.  "We  are  very  busy,"  Brabourne,  i,  138. 
186-187.  "Tom  Lefroy,"  Brabourne,  i,  128. 

187.  "Pink  shoes,"  Brabourne,  i,  234. 

188.  "I  shall  keep  my  ten  pounds,"  Brabourne,  i,  176. 

188.  "My  father  is  doing  all  in  his  power,"  Brabourne,  i,  254. 

188.  "We  have  now  pretty  well  ascertained,"  Brabourne,  ii,  48. 

189.  "I  am  ashamed  to  say,"  Life,  xx,  385. 
189.  "My  mother  has  borne,"  Life,  xx,  385. 

189.  "There  were  two  pools  at  commerce,"  Brabourne,  ii,  12. 
189.  "I  have  this  moment  received,"  Brabourne,  ii,  249. 


246  APPENDIX 

Page 

190.  "Mrs.  Deedes  is  as  welcome  as  May,"  Brabourne,  ii,  293. 

190.  "I  am  a  gentleman's  daughter,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  Ivi. 

191.  "The  Viscountess  Dalrymple,"  Persuasion,  xvi. 

192.  "What  weather,"  Life,  xvi,  289. 

194.  "That  she  gave  me  no  pleasure,"  Life,  xvi,  296. 

194.  "I  liked  her,"  Brabourne,  ii,  210. 

194.  "Dear  Dr.  Johnson,"  Brabourne,  i,  328. 

194.  "Marriage  with  George  Crabbe,"  Brabourne,  ii,  193. 

195.  "Cowper's    'Tirocinium',"    Tirocinium,    562    (Mansfield 

Park,  xlv). 
195.  "Syringa  ivory  pure,"  Cowper,  Task,  Winter  Walk  at  Noon, 

149-150  {Life,  xii,  199-200). 
195.  "Ought  I  to  be  very  much  pleased  with  'Marmion'?" 

Brabourne,  i,  356. 
195.  "Going  to  send  Marmion,"  Brabourne,  ii,  58. 

195.  "Walter  Scott  has  no  business,"  Brabourne,  ii,  317. 

196.  "No  novels  really  but  Miss  Edgeworth's,"  Brabourne,  ii, 

318. 

196.  "Sir  Charles  Grandison,"  Memoir,  v. 

196.  "Remember  that  Aunt  Cassandras,"  Brabourne,  ii,  66. 

196.  "Corinna,"  Brabourne,  ii,  50. 

196.  "Goldsmith,  Hume,  and  Robertson,"  Memoir,  v. 

196.  "Modern  Europe,"  Brabourne,  ii,  166. 

197.  "Roots  of  heart's  ease,"  Brabourne,  i,  231. 

198.  "Lyme,"  Persuasion,  xi. 

199.  "There  were  very  few  beauties,"  Brabourne,  i,  242-243. 

200.  "Mrs.  W.  K.  is  just  dead,"  Brabourne,  i,  325. 
200.  "A  gentleman  in  a  buggy,"  Brabourne,  i,  208. 

200.  "My  aunt  has  a  very  bad  cough,"  Brabourne,  i,  293. 

200.  "A  better  account  of  the  sugar,"  Brabourne,  ii,  256. 

201.  "Sweet,  amiable  Frank,"  Brabourne,  ii,  257. 

203.  "Eliza  has  seen  Lord  Craven,"  Brabourne,  i,  258-259. 

204.  "He  is  quite  an  M.  P.,"  Brabourne,  ii,  186. 

205.  "Mr.  Brecknell  is  very  religious,"  Brabourne,  ii,  99. 
214.  "Elizabeth  laughed  heartily,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  xxxi. 
216.  "I  am  very  much  obliged,"  Brabourne,  ii,  40-41. 


REFERENCES  247 

Page 

216.  "The  good  news,"  Pride  and  Prejudice,  1. 

223.  "Elizabeth,  feeling  all  the  more,"  Pride  and  Prejudice, 

Iviii. 
226.  "He  had  found  her,"  Emma,  xlix. 


Correction. — The  author  withdraws  the  following  statement 
on  page  191:  "The  impassive  formula.  To  the  Prince  Regent, 
shows  no  cleavage  in  her  impenetrable  reserve."  The  facts  do 
not,  in  any  conclusive  or  decisive  way,  support  this  statement. 


INDEX 


Absolute,  Sir  Anthony,  104 

Adam  Bede,  168 

Alcott,  Louisa,  208 

Alfieri,  V.,  165 

L' Allegro,  56 

Allen,  Mrs.,  61 

Ambassadors,  106 

Amory,  Blanche,  52 

d'Annunzio,  Gabriele,  227 

As  You  Like  It,  31 

Arthurian  Tales,  70 

Ashton,  Lucy,  121 

Audrey  (Shakespeare's),  31 

Augier,  Emile,  128 

Austen,  Caroline,  180 

Austen,  Cassandra  (sister),  179, 
182,  196,  200,  208 

Austen,     Cassandra    Leigh 
(mother),  178,  189,  191 

Austen,  Charles  (brother),  179, 
195 

Austen,  Edward  (afterwards  Ed- 
ward Knight,  brother),  179, 
180-181,  183,  186,  189 

Austen,  Sir  Francis,  (brother) 
179,  193,  201 

Austen,  George  (father),  178, 
188,  191 

Austen,  Henry  (brother),  179, 
182,  183 

Austen,  James  (brother),  179, 188 

Austen,  Jane,  accomphshments, 
193;  affections,  198 ;_  appear- 
ance, 180;  biographies,  etc., 
177-178;  classes  dehneated, 
207-208;  criticism  of  novels, 
196-197;  environment,  230- 
231;  feeling  for  nature,  197- 
198;  genuineness,  233-234; 
gossip,  198-200;  indifference 
to  music,  194;  inner  hfe,  236- 
238;  lessons,  232;  love  affairs, 
179-180;  moral  sense,  201- 
204;  period  in  English  liter- 
ature, 229-230;  reading,  194- 


197;  religious  feeling,  204-205; 

social  hfe,  218-220;  strength 

and  docihty,  234-235 
Austen-Leigh,  J.  E.,  177 
Austen-Leigh,  Richard,  177 
Austen-Leigh,  WiUiam,  177 
L'Aveniuriere,  128 

Balfour,  David,  168 

Balzac,  Honors  de,  128,  143 

Barbarina,  Lady,  164 

Bates,  Miss,  87,  105,  108,  110, 

111,  120,  210 
Bath,  51,  56-57,  59,  69,  118,  168, 

180,  185,  218,  230 
Beatrice  (Shakespeare's),  35 
Bede,  Adam,  161 
Bede,  Seth,  161 
Ben  {Love  for  Love) ,  126 
Bennet,  Elizabeth,  25,  26,  27,  28, 

29,  30,  34-35,  38,  39,  40-50, 

149,  157,  168,  190,  203,  208, 

215,  222,  223,  224,  225 
Bennet,  Kitty,  30,  35-36,  149, 

161 
Bennet,   Lydia,   29,  30,  36-37, 

149,  160,  199,  202,  217 
Bennet,  Mary,  35,  160,  161 
Bennet,  Mrs.,  32-33,  40,  160 
Bennet,  Mr.,  31-32,  160 
Bennett,  Arnold,  4,  193 
Benwick,  Captain,  121,  126-127 
Bertram,  Edmund,  59,  66,  76, 

84-85,  94,  155,  169,  205,  223 
Bertram,  Julia,  85 
Bertram,  Lady,  81-82,  94 
Bertram,  Lucy,  121 
Bertram,  Maria,  85,  94. 
Bertram,  Sir  Thomas,  81,  155, 

191 
Bertram,  Tom,  63,  82-84,  91 
Beverages,  183-184 
Beyle,  Henri  153 
Bingley,  Charles,  26,  27,  29,  30, 

39,  40,  83,  223 


249 


250 


INDEX 


Bingley,  Caroline,  46 
Blake,  William,  219 
Blenheim,  25 
Blougram,  Bishop,  67 
Booth,  Captain,  168 
deBourgh,  Lady  Catherine,  28, 

29,  45-46,  160,  169,  191 
de  Bourgh,  Anne,  46 
Brabourne,  Lord,  178 
Brandon,  Colonel,  6,  8,  10,  16-17, 

223 
Brandon,  Eliza,  15 
Breckon,  Mr.,  59 
Bride  of  Abydos,  127 
Brieux,  Eugene,  45 
Bronte,    Charlotte,    39,    50-51, 

163,  206 
Brooke,  Celia,  30 
Brooke,  Dorothea,  30 
Browning,  E.  B.,  190 
Browning,  Robert,  42 
Bulwer-Lytton,  Edward,  131 
Burney,  Fanny,  79,  159-160,  196 
Byron,  Harriet,  185 
Byron,  Lord,  198 

Cain  and  Abel,  3 

Cannan,  George,  82 

Card-playing,  189 

Carlyle,  Jane,  212 

Castle  Rackrent,  207 

Cecilia,  196 

Chad  {The  Ambassadors),  106 

Chadband,  Mr.,  232 

Character-drawing,  147 

Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  165,  192 

Chawton,  180-181 

Churchill,   Frank,  83,  97,   100, 

106-107,  131,  226 
Clarke,  J.  S.,  234 
Clay,  Mrs.,  121,  128-129,  222 
Clergymen,  Four  young,  161 
Clorinde  {U Aventuriere) ,  128 
Collins,  Charlotte.     See  Lucas, 

Charlotte 
Collins,    Mr.,    29,    41-44,    112 

136-137,  169,  171,  210,  222 
Collinsesj  28 
Complexity  of  characters,  162- 

164 


Comedie  Hiimaine,  128 

Confidence,  110 

Congreve,  45,  126 

Conventionalist,  172 

Cordeha,  30 

Corey,  Bromfield,  30 

Corinna,  196 

Corsair,  184-185 

Cosette  (Les  Miserables),  88 

Cowper,  William,  195 

Crabbe,  George,  194,  235-236 

Craftsmanship,  133 

Crawford,    Henry,    91-92,    94, 

222-223 
Crawford,  Mary,  76,  8^91,  205 
Crawfords,  66,  164 
Crawley,  Col.  Rawdon,  116 
Croft,  Admiral,  121,  127,  129 
Croft,  Mrs.,  121 
Cuttle,  Captain,  126 

Dale,  Lily,  34 
Dalrymple,  Coxmtess,  191 
Darcy,  Fitzwilliam,  25,  26,  27, 

28,  29,  30,   37-40,   163,    168, 

215,  222,  223,  224 
Darcy,  Georgiana,  47,  160 
Dashwood,  Elinor,  4,  5,  7,  8,  9, 

10,11-13,16,22,58,100,  168, 

187,  203,  208,  223 
Dashwood,  Fanny,  12,  20,  160, 

169,  188,  202 
Dashwood,  John,  9,  10,  20-21. 

170  '       '  » 

Dashwood,  Marianne,  6,  7,  8,  10, 
12,  13-15,  16,  21,  28,  208,  223, 
225  '        .        . 

Dashwood,  Mrs.,  6,  21 

Dash  woods,  210 

Dates  of  publication,  3  n,  181 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  124 

David  Copperficld,  52 

Deans,  Effie,  36 

Deans,  Jeanie,  101 

Death,  181 

Defoe,  Daniel,  148 

Deronda,  Daniel,  168 

Dickens,  Charles,  18-19,  38-39, 

42,  47,  52,  78,  104,  109,  110, 

126,  132,  156 


INDEX 


251 


Diction,  140-142 
Doctor  Thorne,  35 
Dombey,  38 
Don  Juan  (B3Ton),  91 
Dorian  Gray,  128 
Dotheboys  Hall,  110 
Douglas,  Ellen,  34 
Dramatist,  172-173 
Dress,  184-187 
Dryden,  John,  99,  156 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  185,  235 
Dupins  (Poe),  98 
Durbeyfield,  Tess,  101 

Each  (grammar),  141-142 
Edgeworth,    Maria,    196,    206- 

207 
Edmund  (Shakespeare's),  128 
Effingham,  Violet,  112 
Ekdal,  ffialmar,  62-63 
Elinor  and  Marianne,  3 
Eliot,    George,    14,    30-31,    47, 

101,  131,  161,  168,  190 
Elliot,  Anne,  58,  121-122,  129, 

131,  150,  165,  169,  203,  222, 

223,  225 
Elliot,  Elizabeth,  58,  120,  123, 

165,  169 
Elliot,  Sir  Walter,  58,  120,  123, 

191,  210 
Elliot,  William,    120,   131,   149, 

169 
Eloisa  to  Abelard  (Pope),  13 
Elton,  Mr.,  111-112,  131 
Elton,  Airs.,  110-111 
Emily  {Mysteries  of  Udolpho),  79 
Emma,  95,  96-114,  120,  130-131, 

140,  ISl,  202,  222,  224,  234; 

blunders,  99-100;  characters, 

100-114;  date,  3,  n.;  opinions 

of,    110;  plot,  98-100;   style, 

138-139;  village  life,  114-115 
Emma,  58,  105,  107,  108,  111, 

112 
English  Humorists,  41 
Esmond,  Beatrix,  164 
Etherege,  Sir  George,  156 
Evelina,  79 
Evers,  Blanche,  110 
Eyre,  Jane,  163 


Fabrice  (L' Aventuribre) ,  128 
Fairfax,  Jane,  100,  107-108,  110, 

111,  131,  169 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  188 
Family  of  Jane  Austen,  179 
Ferrars,  Edward,  4,  5,  7,  8,  15, 

23,  162,  187,  223 
Ferrars,  Lucy.    See  Steele,  Lucy 
Ferrars,  Mrs.,  9 
Ferrars,  Robert,  10,  23,  160 
Ferrarses,  83 
Fielding,  Henry,  83,    148,   168, 

196 
Finn,  Phineas,  112 
Fitzwilham,  Colonel,  47 
Folyat,  Mrs.  (Round  the  Comer), 

82 
Food,  181-183 
France,  Anatole,  104 
Franziska  (Heimat),  69 
Freeman,  Mary  Wilkins,  44 
Freytag,  Gustave,  25 
II  Fuoco,  227 

Galsworthy,  John,  142,  151,  219 

Gardiner,  Mrs.,  29 

Gardiners,  29,  47 

Garth,  Mary,  101 

Gaylord,  Mrs.  (A  Modem  In- 
stance,), 82 

Generality,  165-167 

Gissing,  George,  73 

Glegg,  Mrs.,  161 

Goddard,  Mrs.,  120 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  45,  148,  156- 
157,  159,  196 

Goneril  and  Cordelia,  30 

Good-Natured  Man,  15,  156-157 

Grand,  Sarah,  206 

Grandcourt,  H.  M.,  11,  14 

Grandison,  Sir  Charles,  196 

Grant,  Dr.,  92-93 

Grewgious,  Mr.,  18-19 

Hardy,  Thomas,  101,  164 
Harleth,  Gwendolen,  11 
Harville,  Captain,  121 
Hawkins,    John    {Treasure    Is- 
land), 168 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  78 


252 


INDEX 


Hayter,  Charles,  121,  124-125 

Heart  of  Midlothian,  84 

Heimat,  69 

Herrick,  Robert,  225 

Homer,  227 

Hotspur,  104 

Howells,  W.  D.,  31,  47,  59,  82, 

198,  233 
Hughes,  Thomas,  83 
Hugo,  Victor,  88 
Hume,  David,  196 
Humor,  213-218 
Hurst,  Mr.,  46-47,  163 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  62-63 
II  Penseroso,  56 
Illingworth,  Lord,  128 

Jaggers,  Mr.,  104 

James,    Henry,    86,    106,    110, 

164,  167 
Jane  Eyre,  39,  50-51 
Jennings,  Mrs.,  10,  11,  17,  18, 

19,  100,  160,  222 
Jesus,  3 

Johnson,  R.  Brimley,  3,  n. 
Johnson,   Dr.  Samuel,   134-135, 

148,  167,  194 
Jones,  Tom,  168,  186 
Journal  to  Stella,  212 

Kean,  Edmund,  194 

Kentons,  The,  59 

Kew,  Lady,  45 

King  Lear,  128 

Knight,  Edward.     See  Austen, 

Edward 
Knight,  Fanny,  158,  167,  196 
Knightley,  George,  64,104-105, 

111,  114,  222,  224,  226 
Knightley,  John,  105-106,  170 
Knightleys,  96,  103 

Lady  Susan,  143 
Lamb,  Charles,  32 
Languish,  Lydia,  49 
Lefroy,  Anna,  133,  197 
Lefroy,  Tom,  186 
Leipsic,  Battle  of,  192 
Lessing,  (Jottfried,  49 


Letters,  141,  152,  177,  178,  192, 

210,  213,  229 
Liabilities  and  assets,  20&-238 
Life  and  Letters,  169,  177 
Life  of  Nelson,  193 
Love,  220-228 
Love  for  Love,  126 
Lovelaces,  203 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  217 
Lucas,  Charlotte  (Mrs.  Collins), 

29,  44-45,  161,  171,  222 
Lucas,  Maria,  47 
Lucas,  Sir  WilUam,  47,  191 
Lucases,  28 
Lupin,    Mrs.    (Martin    Chuzzle- 

wit),  109 
Lushington,  Mr.,  203 
Lyly,  John,  141-142 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  59,  99,  141, 
161,  162;  quotation,  159-160 

Mansfield  Park,  65-95,  120,  130- 
131,  158,  181,  197,  202,  208, 
222,  236;  characters,  76-95; 
date,  3,  n.;  morals,  74-76; 
plot,  65-73;  style,  138 

Marble  Faun,  78 

Marie  Antoinette,  79 

Marlow,  45 

Marynion,  195 

Martha  and  Mary,  4 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  127 

[Melema,]  Tito,  14 

Memoir,  177,  180 

Menander,  4 

Meredith,  George,  28,  140,  164 

Merlin,  70 

Middlemarch,  131 

Middleton,  Clara,  164 

Middleton,  Lady,  9,  19 

Middleton,    Sir    John,    19,    20, 
160,  191 

Middletons,  9 

Mills,  Julia,  52 

Milton,  John,  56 

Les  MisSrables,  88 

Modern  Europe,  196 

Modern  Inslana ,  A,  82 

Moliore,  4,  44,  99,  159,  202 

Money,  187-190 


I 


INDEX 


253 


Morland,  Catherine,  50,  57-59, 

129,  154,  162,  210,  223 
Musgrove,    Charles,    120,    123, 

129,  161,  170 

Musgrove,   Henrietta,   120-121, 

222 
Musgrove,  Louisa,  121,  150,  222 
Musgrove,  Mary,  120,  123,  129 
My  Novel,  131 
Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  49,  53,  79 

Nathan  the  Wise,  49 

Nature,  197-198,  207 

Navy,  192-193 

New  Testament,  4 

Nickleby,  Mrs.,  109 

Norris,  Mrs.,  74,  85-89,  93,  94, 

169,  188 
Northanger   Abbey,   49-64,    129, 

130,  181,  202,  136;  characters, 
57-62;  date,  3,  n.;  plot,  54-55; 
quotation,  153-154 

Novels;  courtship,  210;  dates  of 
pubhcation,  3,  n. ;  domesticity, 
208-209;  logic,  210;  portrayal 
of  love,  220-228;  reUgious 
element,  209 

Nubbles,  Mrs.,  109 

Observer,  173 
Old-Wives  Tale,  4 
Oriel,  Patience,  35 

Pahner,  Mr.,  17-18,  160 

Palmer,  Mrs.,  19,  160 

Pahners,  10,  12,  133 

Pamela,  168 

Pecksniff,  Mr.,  189 

Perfection,  167-169 

Persuasion,  116-129,  130-131, 
133,  167,  171,  181,  191,  193, 
197,  198,  202,  222;  abundance 
of  characters,  120-121;  char- 
acters, 120-129;  date,  3,  n.; 
moral,  119-120;  plot,  116-119 

Peveril  of  the  Peak,  47 

Phihps,  Mrs.,  47 

Physique,  164 

Plots.    See  Titles  of  novels 

Pohtics,  192 

Pope,  Alexander,  12,  13,  156 


Price,  Fanny,  58,  65.  66,  7&-80, 
91,  94,  155,  195,  197,  208-209, 
223,  225;  helplessness,  78-79; 
judgment,  77-78;  virtue,  77 

Price,  Susan,  93 

Price,  Wilham,  93,  208-209 

Pride  and  Prejudice,  3,  6,  24-48, 
65,  95,  96,  119,  120,  121,  130, 
136-138,  163,  181,  192,  201, 
214,  215,  221;  agitation,  79- 
80;  compared  with  Emma, 
114-115;  characters,  31-47; 
date,  3,  n.;  plot,  25-27;  style, 
136 

Prince  Regent,  191,  234 

Prodigal  Son,  3 

Proudie,  Mrs.,  86 

Radcliffe,  Mrs.,  13,  49-53  pas- 
sim, 57,  79,  148,  207 

Rank,  191-192 

Rasselas,  167 

Rastignacs,  128 

Reahst,  147-173, 

Relatives  in  the  aristocracy,  192 

Richards,  Polly,  109 

Richardson,  Samuel,  148,  168 

Ring  and  the  Book,  42 

Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  31 

Rivers,  St.  John,  163 

Rob  Roy,  35 

Robertson,  George,  84 

Robertson,  Wilham,  196 

Rochester,  Edward,  39 

Rockminster,  Lady,  104 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  227 

Romola,  31 

Round  the  Corner,  82 

Rosalind  (Shakespeare's),  31 

Rushworth,  Maria,  See  Bertram, 
Maria 

Russell,  Lady,  121 

Sacred  Fount,  167 

Sand,  George,  206 

Sanford,  Henry,  110 

Santayana,  George,  205 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  35,  36,  41,  80, 

83-84,  87,  101,  110,  121,  195, 

198,  203,  230 
Sense  and  Sensibility,  3-23,  27- 


254 


INDEX 


28,  65,  130,  133,  14S,  181,  198, 
201,  204,  222;  characters,  11- 
23;  comparison  with  Pride  and 
Prejudice,  27-28;  date,  3,  n. 

Servants,  187 

Shakespeare,  William,  34,  47, 
104 

ShaU  and  will,  141 

Sharp,  Becky,  116 

Sharp,  Miss,  110 

SheUey,  P.  B.,  219 

Shepherd,  Mr.,  121 

Sheridan,  R.  B.,  4,  64,  104,  148, 
159 

Smith,  Goldwin,  19,  20,  37,  43, 
59,  87,  94 

Smith,  Harriet,  100,  111-112, 
113-114,  131,  226 

Smith,  Mrs.,  121,  129,  133 

Smollett,  Tobias,  18,  126,  148 

Solmeses,  203 

Southey,  Robert,  193 

Spectator,  196 

Spenser,  Edmund,  79 

Squire  Western,  19 

Steele,  Anne,  12,  23 

Steele,  Lucy,  5,  9,  12,  15,  22-23, 
160,  169 

Steele,  Misses,  9 

Stephen,  Leslie,  178 

Sterne,  Laurence,  41,  148 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  168 

Style,  134-142 

Sudermann,  Hermann,  69 

Taine,  H.,  13,  39 

Tale  of  Edwin  Drood,  18 

Tartuffe,  202 

Terence,  4 

Tessa  31 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  5,  20,  41,  42, 

45,  47,  52,  58,  104,  116,  141, 

156,  164,  207-208 
Theatre-going,  194 
Theatricals,  67-68 
Thenardiess,  88 
Thorpe,  Isabella,  55,  58-59,  62- 

63,  124,  129,  155,  169,  202 
Thorpe,  John,  55-56,  58-59,  63- 

64,  129,  169 


Three    Daughters    of    Monsieur 

Dupont,  45 
TUney,  EUnor,  61 
Tilney,  General,  49,  53,  61,  169 
Tilney,  Henry,  59-61,  129,  151, 

162,  169,  223 
Tilneys,  49,  136 
To  Jane  Austen  (poem),  iii-v 
Trafalgar,  25 
Treasure  Island,  168 
Troilus  arul  Cress-ida,  227 
Trollope,  Ajithony,  35,  86,  112, 

113,  131 
Trunnion,  Commodxyre,  126 
Tulhver,  Mrs.,  161 
Turgenieff,  Ivan,  211 

Valdes,  Palacio,  4 
Vanity  Fair,  5,  199 
Verga,  Giovanni,  211 
Vernon,  Diana,  35 
Vye,  Eustacia,  164 

Wallenstein,  72 

Ward  (Mrs.  E.  S.  Phelps),  206 

Ward,  Mrs.  Humphrey,  206 

Watson,  Lady  Susan,  142-143 

Watsons,  142-143 

Waverley,  195 

Wentworth,  Captain,  121,  125- 

127,  131,  150,  223 
Weston,  Mr.,  103,  105,  106 
Weston,  Mrs.,  104-107 
What  the  Public  Wants,  193 
Wharton,  Edith,  2U6 
Whitney,  Mrs.,  208 
Wickham,  39,  40-41,  83,  169,  202 
Wild  Duck,  62 
Wilde,  Oscar,  128 
Willoughby,  John,  6,  7,  8,  10,  12, 

13,  14-15,  83,  202 
Woodhousc,     Ktnma,     100-102, 

102,  170;  leisure,  101 ;  solidity, 

100-101;    want    of    principle, 

101-102 
Woodhouse,   Mr.,   87,    102-103, 

lOS,  110,  111,  120 
Wordsworth,  William,   156,   198 

Yeats,  William,  72 
Yellowplush  Jeames,  208 


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